Clive Staples Lewis: 29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963. C S Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University, earning a triple first.
Elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he worked from 1925 to 1954. Then In 1954, he was awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University
The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven novels that are considered a classic of children’s literature. Written between 1949 and 1954.
Like J.R.R Tolkien ‘The Hobbit’ and Arthur Ransome ‘Swallows and Amazons series’ which also maybe considered children’s books, they have become firm favourites for very many adults as well.
Click image for Amazon link.
The connection between Great Malvern gas lamps and this series of books, was a story that C.S Lewis is said to have been inspired by them for his opening description of Narnia in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Walking home from a Malvern pub one snowy night with his friends J.R.R Tolkien and George Sayer; while looking at the gas lamps, was said to have remarked how such imagery would be well suited in a future book, true? I’m not sure, but it’s a nice story.
All three authors spent many happy hours walking in the Malvern hills, so maybe there was inspiration for many of the books.
Also, did anyone realise why I titled the image posted before the gas lamp ‘I spy with my little eye’ it was because, on a pole middle right of the photograph is a surveillance camera.
Being stopped from travel and almost locked away for more than a year, I’ve not had much enthusiasm or even opportunity for photography. So going through my negatives/slides and digital files has kept me from going ‘Doolally’, for those not familiar with this word: it means ‘lose one’s mind’, derived from the boredom felt at a British Army transit camp in Maharashtra India, established in 1861.
