But first, it will pay to consider more closely the characters of Queen Jadis and Uncle Andrew, powerful archetypes for Lewis’s commentary. But the rings carry them not back to Charn, but to a new world. Polly and Digory use the rings to jar Jadis away, but they also accidentally drag along Uncle Andrew, a cabby (Frank) and his horse (Strawberry). While in London, Jadis turns Uncle Andrew into her apprentice-slave as she plots to subdue the city. As the terrified children seek to escape, Jadis grabs onto them, following them through the pondey portals first back into the wood, then back to London. When Digory impulsively rings the bell, the statue comes to life: it is Queen Jardis, who caused the destruction of Charn. They find a hall filled with statues, and near the statue of a beautiful but cruel-looking woman, a bell with the inscription that tempts them to ring it. The children jump into one of the ponds, landing in Charn, a dead world. They are transported to a way station between worlds, magical woods dotted with ponds, each a doorway to a different world.

Andrew is curious about these worlds, but in his cowardice to go himself, tricks Polly and Digory into grabbing the rings. A magician, Andrew has a set of yellow and green rings which will transport, when touched, a person to another world. She died just a few years later, in 1960, and Lewis followed her in 1963.This story of the creation of Narnia actually precedes The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as it begins in the early 1900s when two children, Digory and Polly, stumble on the hidden room of Digory’s uncle Andrew.

Later in life, Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American woman with whom he had corresponded. In 1954, Lewis became chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College of Cambridge University. During World War II, he delivered a series of radio addresses that became the basis for his famous work of apologetics, Mere Christianity. Though Lewis had been a staunch atheist since his teen years, he became a Christian in 1931 and remained a committed member of the Church of England for the rest of his life.

From 1925–1954, he taught English literature in Oxford’s Magdalen College.

He was injured in 1918 and thereafter returned to Oxford, where he studied classics, philosophy, and English literature. Lewis entered Oxford University in 1916, but he was soon sent to France to fight in World War I. He loved spending time in his father’s massive library, and he lost his mother to cancer around the age of 10. Growing up, Clive-who adopted the nickname “Jack” as a young boy-and his brother Warren lived in a house called Little Lea in East Belfast. Lewis was born in Northern Ireland to Albert James Lewis, a solicitor, and Flora Lewis, the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman.

Narnia the magician's nephew