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There are some remarkable things about the book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. One of them is the author, the English scholar, C.S. Lewis. Why is a great literary mind writing a book for children?

Alternatively, why do we wonder that a great imaginative story is only for children? It has been said that a good children’s story is a good adult story and visa versa. LWW is certainly both. If you have read the Narnia stories, keep going. If you have not,  you are forbidden to continue until you do read the stories.

During the WWII German bombings of London, the four Pevensie children, eventually the Kings and Queens of Narnia, were evacuated to the remote country home of Professor Ketterley. In an upstairs hallway there was an old wardrobe. One day the four children, to avoid being caught by the housekeeper stepped into it. They stepped out of the other side into a snowy woods, home of the white witch, Jadis, and the adventures began.

The story has scenes of bravery and courage, of true virtue and self-sacrifice. It gives us insights into the teachings of Jesus. Time and time again we see incidents from the Sermon on the Mount retold in Narnian place and time. The story has scenes of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, not of Jesus but of a talking lion, Aslan. I have read the Chronicles many times, and I like to think I am the better for it. Aslan knows whether that is an idle dream or a realistic hope.

LWW is one of the seven Chronicles of Narnia. It was the first written and published (1950). The others, all tied together chronologically, followed. The whole story begins in The Magicians’s Nephew and ends in The Last Battle which has eerie echoes of today’s headlines.