A famous Oxford contemporary of C. S. Lewis, A. L. Rowse, died at age 93 on 3 October 1997 in Cornwall. Like Lewis, Rowse was a “politically incorrect” Oxford professor who said what he thought and acquired fame and popularity through his unusually lively writing. In spite of severe poverty and poor health, he eventually became a distinguished historian, an Read More ›
An Oxford researcher has checked the Ordnance Survey maps of the Kilns neighborhood, and the Kilns had no outside staircase in 1921 or 1936. (O/S maps are made only in times of major rebuilding or rerouting.) A stairway was added to the east wall after 1936, and it appears on the 1957 O/S map. It led from C. S. Lewis’s Read More ›
“I suspect that Doug Gresham knows very little about the finances of The Kilns, even though he supports Stan Mattson’s C. S. Lewis Foundation (at least to the extent of making appearances on their behalf). In fact, I wonder if any of those who support the foundation know much about the finances of The Kilns, other than its Board of Read More ›
“In 1997 eleven summer volunteers worked at the Kilns, but the outside staircase has not been replaced. A door on the north wall, near the east corner, has been bricked up. The fence on the west side has not been renewed, but the north fence has been partially propped up with scrap timber. The garden area on the south side Read More ›
On 14 March Douglas Gresham (who lives in Ireland now) announced to the MERELEWIS E-mail group: “I have been away lately in London on Jack’s business, and one of the projects we discussed at a meeting with Harper Collins, was the possibility of putting out a Collector’s Limited Edition of the Chronicles of Narnia. This would be a numbered, single Read More ›
When asked recently if he and his brother were included in Lewis’s will, Douglas Gresham answered in C. S. Lewis News “Jack’s will was rather complicated and really nobody’s business but ours.” One of the readers of C. S. Lewis News is Rt Hon Chris Patten, former Governor of Hong Kong and a Lewis admirer. Patten was recently locked in Read More ›
3 December, 1997: “All of us here at the C. S. Lewis Foundation believe our work is of the utmost strategic importance in the battle for the minds and hearts of this generation. And it appears we are not alone in thinking so as a growing number of you have joined with us, through your prayers and financial support, in Read More ›
Although the Lewis literary estate is owned by an investment company incorporated under the laws of Singapore (for tax purposes), and its attorney is reportedly based in Holland, its managing director is a man named Melvin Adams who lives on Church Road in Greystones, a seaside resort in County Wicklow about 20 miles south of Dublin. Telephone 353-1-2875233; fax 353-1-2875236. Read More ›
C. S. Lewis introduced Roger Lancelyn Green to Walter Hooper on 17 June 1963. On 1 August Hooper wrote to Green. Once this letter was delivered, it was Green’s property; and he or his heirs eventually placed it in the Bodleian Library. (If Green had returned the letter to Hooper, it would probably reside in the closed cache of papers Read More ›
by James O’Fee, Belfast ‘Titanic’ will probably be this year’s largest-grossing feature film, and readers may like to consider C. S. Lewis’s links with that ‘ship of dreams’. Jonathan Bardon writes: ‘From the late autumn of 1908 a huge gantry, 228 feet above the slips, dominated the skyline of east Belfast; here Harland and Wolff prepared to build two immense Read More ›