Anoth­er stal­wart from my mem­o­ries of our pri­ma­ry school book­shelf, the bril­liant, ground-break­ing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis, pub­lished in 1950 as the first in what would become a series of sev­en, col­lec­tive­ly known as The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
Prince Caspi­an (1951)
The Voy­age of the Dawn Tread­er (1952)
The Sil­ver Chair (1953)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
The Magi­cian’s Nephew (1955)
The Last Bat­tle (1956)

I can pic­ture the cov­ers of some three or four of these in my own col­lec­tion of books that I had at home, though crim­i­nal­ly, I don’t think I actu­al­ly read any of them oth­er than the TLTWATW (even the acronym is a mouth­ful). I must have done? Well per­haps, but it was a long time ago…

Still, I def­i­nite­ly read TLTWATW and I remem­ber it as a mag­i­cal expe­ri­ence. There can’t be many peo­ple who don’t know that it involves a por­tal to the realm of Nar­nia, a world of mag­ic, strange beasts and talk­ing ani­mals, found by four evac­uee chil­dren at the back of a wardrobe in their tem­po­rary guardian’s coun­try home. They find them­selves called upon by the lion Aslan to pro­tect Nar­nia from the evil White Witch and become embroiled in adven­tures that go on for years with­out affect­ing the real world’s time­line.

The sto­ry was prompt­ed by Lewis’s own host­ing of three evac­u­at­ed school­girls at his house in Ris­inghurst near Oxford, in Sep­tem­ber 1939. The expe­ri­ence prompt­ed him to begin a sto­ry, and the rest is his­to­ry. Writ­ing about it lat­er he wrote:

At first, I had very lit­tle idea how the sto­ry would go. But then sud­den­ly Aslan came bound­ing into it. I think I had been hav­ing a good many dreams of lions about that time. Apart from that, I don’t know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole sto­ry togeth­er, and soon he pulled the six oth­er Narn­ian sto­ries in after him.

A num­ber of years ago I went to an inter­ac­tive event at a con­vert­ed church build­ing in Leeds in which all we par­tic­i­pants start­ed the jour­ney by walk­ing though a long line of coats and clothes in a “wardrobe” before break­ing through to a snowy land­scape peo­ple by actors play­ing the var­i­ous ani­mal char­ac­ters. Let’s read the excerpt from the book that this expe­ri­ence actu­al­ly recre­at­ed very impres­sive­ly. The chil­dren are explor­ing their new envi­ron­ment and Lucy has been left behind in one of the rooms, intrigued by a big old wardrobe which she opens and enters…

Look­ing into the inside, she saw sev­er­al coats hang­ing up — most­ly long fur coats. There was noth­ing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She imme­di­ate­ly stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leav­ing the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very fool­ish to shut one­self into any wardrobe. Soon she went fur­ther in and found that there was a sec­ond row of coats hang­ing up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step fur­ther in — then two or three steps always expect­ing to feel wood­work against the tips of her fin­gers. But she could not feel it.

“This must be a sim­ply enor­mous wardrobe!” thought Lucy, going still fur­ther in and push­ing the soft folds of the coats aside to make room for her. Then she noticed that there was some­thing crunch­ing under her feet. “I won­der is that more moth­balls?” she thought, stoop­ing down to feel it with her hand. But instead of feel­ing the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt some­thing soft and pow­dery and extreme­ly cold. “This is very queer,” she said, and went on a step or two fur­ther.

Next moment she found that what was rub­bing against her face and hands was no longer soft fur but some­thing hard and rough and even prick­ly. “Why, it is just like branch­es of trees!” exclaimed Lucy. And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inch­es away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Some­thing cold and soft was falling on her. A moment lat­er she found that she was stand­ing in the mid­dle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air.