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He once quipped that “any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance”. But although Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia are imbued with Christian allegory, the seven books are far more fantastical than the purely religious realms to which they are sometimes confined. Lewis was gripped by mythology from childhood, and the effect of his conversion to Christianity, at the age of 33, was more directly addressed through his prolific apologetic writings and adult fiction. Born in Belfast in 1898, he hated England at first, but became Professor of English at Oxford and a member of the Inklings, the literary group that included his close friend Tolkien. Best known today as a children’s author, his academic treatises and adult fiction (The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce) are equally enduring.

One to read: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

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