Lion, Witch, And Wardrobe

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29, 1898. His father was Albert James Lewis, a solicitor whose father had come to Ireland from Wales. His mother was Flora Augusta Hamilton Lewis, the daughter of a Church of Ireland minister. He had one older brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis . At the age of four, shortly after his dog Jacksie was hit by a car, Lewis announced that his name was now Jacksie. At first he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jacks which became Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. At six his family moved into "Little Lea", the house the elder Mr. Lewis built for Mrs. Lewis, in Strandtown, Northern Ireland.

Lewis was initially schooled by private tutors before being sent to the Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire, in 1908, the same year that his mother died of cancer. Lewis's brother had already enrolled there three years previously. The school was closed not long afterwards due to a lack of pupilsÐ'--the headmaster Robert "Oldie" Capron was soon after committed to an insane asylum. Later in Surprised By Joy, Lewis would later nickname the school "Belsen". Then having won a scholarship to University College, Oxford in 1916, Lewis enlisted the following year in the British Army as World War I raged on, and was commissioned an officer in the third Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. Lewis arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France on his nineteenth birthday, and experienced trench warfare.

While being trained for the army Lewis shared a room and became close friends with another cadet, "Paddy" Moore. The two had made a mutual pact that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Jane King Moore, and a friendship very quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was eighteen when they met, and Jane, who was forty-five. The friendship with Mrs. Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father refused to visit him.

From boyhood Lewis immersed himself in Irish mythology and literature and expressed an interest in the Irish language, though he seems to have made little attempt to learn it. He