To Narnia and the North!

Remembering the haunts that haunt C.S. Lewis’ books | Melanie M. Jeschke

The sculpture draws you in. The life-size bronze statue of a man—one hand on a chair, the other opening the door of a large wardrobe—stands in an unassuming brick forecourt of a public library in Belfast, surrounded by high, barbed-wire security fences. This is the city's only official memorial to its literary son, Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis. Carved in the pavement are the words: "Born 1898. Reborn 1931."

Many Narnia fans are at least vaguely aware that C.S. Lewis taught English Literature at Oxford and later at Cambridge. But far fewer know that Lewis was not an Englishman, but an Ulsterman hailing from a suburb of East Belfast. The untamed terrains of Northern Ireland, much more than the pastoral landscapes of England, imprinted themselves on his youthful imagination and later emerged in the fantastic stories of the mature author.