Eventually Jack gave seven different series of lectures on the BBC around the themes of what Christians believe and how they should live in society. The transcripts of his first two series were published together in July 1942 under the title Broadcast Talks. The book became an immediate bestseller. In 1954 the texts from all seven of the lecture series were gathered together and published in a single book titled Mere Christianity.
Hearing what a competent and compelling speaker Jack was on the radio, the chaplain-in-chief of the Royal Air Force, the Reverend Maurice Edwards, approached Jack about undertaking a speaking tour of air force bases in Great Britain, where Jack could encourage the troops in the war effort. Jack was not convinced that he could be of much use in that sphere, but he remembered from his time in the army during World War I how frightening it was to be a young man poised to enter battle. So he agreed to do what he could.
Soon Jack was spending most weekends traversing England by train to various RAF stations, where sometimes only a small group of men gathered to hear him speak and at other times hundreds of men crowded together to hear him talk. But whether the group was big or small, the men were all eager to hear something that would lift their spirits. In December 1941 Jack wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves, outlining how he had spent his winter holidays:
All through the Vacation I was going round lecturing to the R.A.F.—away for 2 or 3 days at a time and then home for 2 or 3 days. I had never realized how tiring perpetual traveling is (specially in crowded trains). One felt all the time as if one had just played a game of football—aching all over. None the less I had some interesting times and saw some beautiful country. Perthshire, and all the country between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury, and Cumberland, are what chiefly stuck in my mind. It also gave me the chance in many places to see and smell the sea and hear the sound of gulls again, which otherwise I would have been pining for.
Sometimes Warren would accompany Jack on legs of his speaking tour, but both brothers were careful to be back in Oxford for Monday nights to attend the weekly meeting of a new club. The club was the Oxford Socratic Club, and Jack had been appointed its president. The purpose of the Socratic Club was to be an “open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular.” Each Monday night a lively group of students and teachers from Oxford, both atheists and Christians, gathered together to listen to various speakers from across the religious spectrum and then logically explore what had been said, paying close attention to any holes in a person’s argument or reasoning. Jack was particularly gifted at presenting the intellectual case for Christianity and for shooting down the arguments of atheists.
In his “spare time,” Jack set about the task of writing the second novel in his science-fiction trilogy. This book was titled Perelandra.
Meanwhile, in February 1942, The Screwtape Letters was published. At first only two thousand copies of the book were printed, but these were sold even before they came off the press. In the end the book was reprinted eight times during its first year of publication. The Screwtape Letters was even published in the United States.
Although Jack cringed at the idea, he was now a celebrity, and letters from admirers flowed in. This was in addition to the fame he had garnered from his radio talks on the BBC. At the time The Screwtape Letters was published, Jack was delivering a series of talks titled “What Christians Believe.” This series was so popular that he quickly prepared another, this time exploring Christian behavior. Each time Jack delivered a new series of talks on the BBC, he became more popular and received more complimentary reviews. One reviewer wrote:
Mr. Lewis is that rare thing—being a born broadcaster: born to the manner as well as the matter. He neither buttonholes you nor bombards you; there is no false intimacy and no false eloquence. He approaches you directly, as a rational person only to be persuaded by reason. He is confident and yet humble in his possession and propagation of the truth. He is helped by a speaking voice of great charm and style of manifest sincerity.
Jack chose to speak on Christian behavior mainly because that is what he was being tested on at home at The Kilns. The biggest test came in the form of Mrs. Moore, who was now a very grumpy and demanding old woman. Janie’s brother had gone insane several years earlier, and as Jack watched Janie descend into stranger and stranger behavior, he wondered whether she too was following her brother on the road to insanity. Janie had no tolerance for ration cards, blacking out the house at night, or the Lewis brothers’ midnight patrols. In fact, she treated every inconvenience as if it had been planned just to annoy her. Jack needed all the patience and kindness he could muster to continue looking after her.
Several of the girls who had evacuated from London and were billeted at The Kilns worked hard to keep Mrs. Moore from becoming too agitated. One of these girls in particular, sixteen-year-old June Flewett, had an intuitive sense of what needed to be done to calm the household. June spent many hundreds of hours doing menial tasks to Mrs. Moore’s exacting standards. As Jack and Warren watched June, they realized what an extraordinary young woman she was. Jack decided that one day he would model a character in one of his books after her.
The war with Germany and her allies dragged on. At first, after the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk and the subsequent German bombing of Great Britain from the air, the mood of the country was gloomy. In fact, everyone in England was certain that a German invasion was imminent. Jack, too, was so convinced an invasion was near that one day when he remembered that his old officer’s revolver from World War I was in his bedside drawer, he slipped the weapon into his pocket and walked to Magdalen Bridge. He threw the revolver into the river, fearing that the invading Germans would shoot him and everyone else at The Kilns if they were to find the gun.
German submarines were busy bombing merchant ships carrying much-needed goods to England, thus creating severe shortages of some foods and supplies and leading to a tightening of the rationing system.
Slowly the mood began to change. After Japanese airplanes bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941, the United States entered the war. Soon fresh-faced American soldiers were showing up in England, where their appearance began to lift people’s spirits.
After so many apparent German victories in the war, the tide began to turn. In North Africa Allied forces beat back the Germans and Italians and eventually began invading Italy. And because they were unable to subdue the Soviets, having to abort their invasion of Russia due to harsh weather and the tenacity of the Soviet defenders, the Germans were now fighting the war on two fronts, stretching their resources to the limits.
By the time 1944 dawned, it was becoming obvious that the Allied forces would eventually defeat the Germans. It was just a matter of time. Then on June 6, 1944, D-day, a massive Allied invasion of France began on the beaches of Normandy. At first the Germans put up stiff resistance, but as the Allies kept invading, the Germans began to pull back.
As he read accounts of the Allied advances in France against the Germans, Jack knew it would not be long until the war would finally be over. He looked forward to the time when Great Britain and the rest of Europe and the world could put the madness of war behind them once and for all.
Chapter 12
A Children’s Fairy Tale
May 8, 1945, was a day no one in England at the time would ever forget. The day before, Germany had surrendered unconditionally to her Allied opponents. The war was over! Euphoria broke out in the streets. People hugged each other and wept for joy. People partied. The Union Jack fluttered proudly from flagpoles. The people of Great Britain had weathered the darkest days of the war, when it seemed certain that the Nazis were about to invade their country. They had persevered against the odds, and now, with the help of her Allies, Great Britain had prevailed. Adolf Hitler’s Germany had been smashed into surrender.
Like everyone else in the country, Jack was relieved that the war had finally ended. He and Warren were alive, the rhythm of their lives largely unaltered except for their civil-defense duties and the inconveniences of worn-out shoes and a limited amount of food to eat.
Although the war in Europe was over, people realized that it would take years for the continent to fully recover from the ravages of that war. For one thing, rationing would continue for quite some time. However, few English people realized at the time the ongoing sacrifices they would have to make. Shortages of food continued until even potatoes, a staple of the English diet, had to be rationed. Warren complained of going to bed hungry and waking up hungry.
While the Inklings had continued to meet throughout the war, the flow of the group was often interrupted by the comings and goings of group members. Now, Jack hoped, the group could get back into full swing. Within two weeks of the end of the war, however, Jack’s friend and fellow writer Charles Williams from Oxford University Press died suddenly. The day after the end of the war, Charles was gripped with stomach pains and checked himself into the local hospital. His condition was not thought to be serious. The next week, after an Inklings meeting, Jack went to visit Charles, only to be told that his friend had just died. After making it through the entire war without suffering any personal loss, Jack was devastated by the sudden death of his friend. He expressed his feelings in a letter to another friend, a nun named Sister Penelope:
You will have heard of the death of my dearest friend, Charles Williams, and, no doubt, prayed for him. For me too, it has been, and is, a great loss. But not at all a dejecting one. It has greatly increased my faith. Death has done nothing to my idea of him, but he has done—oh, I can’t say what—to my idea of death. It has made the next world much more real and palpable.
The next world probably seemed more real to Jack for another reason too. Jack was anxiously awaiting the publication of his latest book titled The Great Divorce: A Dream. The fourteen chapters of the book had been published one by one in the Guardian between November 1944 and April 1945 and then gathered together into a single volume that was published in November 1945. The book recounted an imaginary journey of a group of people from hell to view the wonders of heaven. It was written in Jack’s usual clear and concise style. More than anything Jack tried to write so that anyone could understand what he wrote, noting in a letter to a critic, “Any fool can write learned language. The vernacular is the real test. If you can’t turn your faith into it, then either you don’t understand it, or you don’t believe it.”
Whenever Jack wrote on religious themes, his goal was always to make Christianity accessible to as large a number of common folk as possible. Of course he was tested on this at home. Despite the popularity of Jack’s Christian writing, Mrs. Moore still deeply resented the fact that Jack had become a Christian, and she refused to have anything to do with religion herself. It was not surprising, then, that a character very much like Janie Moore appeared in The Great Divorce.
After completing this book, Jack began work on a more intense theological book called Miracles: A Preliminary Study. Meanwhile, the publication of The Great Divorce brought Jack to the attention of serious theologians. In early 1946 the University of St. Andrews in Scotland bestowed a great honor on him. The school awarded him a doctor of divinity degree, making him Dr. C. S. Lewis.
