Sculptures
C.S. Lewis Square is a square and park near Belfast’s Strandtown district, where C.S. Lewis was born. The square and adjacent park feature eight sculptures by the Irish artist Maurice Harron of characters and places from Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. The square with the park was opened on 22 November 2016 and shows sculptures of Robin the Redbreast, the Stone Table, the Lion Aslan, Mr and Mrs Beaver, the wolf Maugrim, the White Witch, and Mr Tumnus. A little further to the east stands a bronze sculpture called ‘The Searcher’ by the Irish artist Ross Wilson. It is based on the wardrobe from Lewis’s book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and was made in 1998 to mark Lewis’s centenary.
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia are a series of seven children’s books, which C.S. Lewis starts in 1948 and completes in 1954. Shortly before Britain declares war on Germany in September 1939, many children are evacuated from London, and some are housed at The Kilns, Lewis’s Oxford home. Lewis enjoys the children, and it seems that the presence of some of them makes him write The Chronicles of Narnia. In six years, the following seven volumes are published:
1950 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
1951 Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia
1952 The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”
1953 The Silver Chair
1954 The Horse and His Boy
1955 The Magician’s Nephew
1956 The Last Battle
According to Lewis, the series is not planned beforehand. The stories all begin with pictures in his head. They are not allegories but supposals. For Lewis, the lion Aslan is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question: what might Jesus Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate, die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?
Movies
After C.S. Lewis’s death in November 1963, various stage and screen adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia are made in the 1980s and 1990s. Several book adaptations are broadcast as TV series in the UK and USA. During his life, Lewis does not sell the film rights to the Narnia series. Later, after seeing the possibilities of computer-generated imagery, Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham (1945–) approves a film adaption. Three movies have now been made in The Chronicles of Narnia film series:
2005 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2008 Prince Caspian
2010 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Sources
David Bleakley, C.S. Lewis. At home in Ireland
Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis. Companion & Guide
Jeffrey Schultz & John West, The C.S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge