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Of mice and men and Magdalen: C. S. Lewis’s Oxford

This article is taken from the July 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. The life of a dedicated Oxford don and…

Lewis responded to further pressure from Cambridge by saying that he was precluded from moving by his “peculiar domestic setup”, a phrase that masked a concern about the heavy drinking to which his beloved brother Warren (known as Warnie) was prone. Lewis’s solicitude for Mrs Moore and Maureen had already prevented him from applying for a prestigious All Souls Fellowship, which he might have been in a position to win after his double first in Greats (that is, Literae Humaniores, the bachelor’s degree in Classics at Oxford). The group that formed around the two authors in 1936, eventually dubbed “the Inklings” (the title of the 1978 book by Humphrey Carpenter about the literary circle), meant that the two were long aware of each other’s writings and their different approaches to myth, fantasy, and religious faith.

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