C S Lewis Centenary Group

Number 7, December 1997

News each month from the C S Lewis Centenary Group

11 Raglan Road, Bangor, Co Down BT20 3TL, Northern Ireland.

Web site: http://www.d-n-a.net/users/cslewis/ E-mail: cslewis@dnet.co.uk

The great Christian writer, C S Lewis, was born in Belfast on 29th November 1898. The C S Lewis Centenary Group formed in 1994, so that Lewis’s native land might suitably celebrate his Centenary in 1998.

C S LEWIS CENTENARY PROGRAMME OF EVENTS

The Group launched our C S Lewis Centenary Programme of Events at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, on Thursday 27th November, in conjunction with the Lyric Theatre’s launch of their Christmas production of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Both local television channels, BBC & UTV, covered the Launch on their main evening news. Local Radio and the press, too, gave the event coverage.

The Programme includes events:

* in the United States, from Seattle on the Pacific, to Virginia on the Atlantic;

* in Oxford and Cambridge, in England, where Lewis lived and taught for so many years; and

* in Ulster, Lewis’s native land.

CSL’s close living relatives attended the launch. On his father’s side, Mrs Kelsie Erskine and Mrs Heather Nelson. And on his mother’s side, Mrs Primrose Henderson.

CONFERENCES

Loose in the Fire: Oxbridge ‘98 A Symposium in Oxford and Cambridge, organised by the C. S. Lewis Foundation of Redlands, California. July 19 to August 1, with a week on the site of each University. Theme Loose in the Fire, inspired by the Book of Daniel, Chapter 3. Speakers include: J I Packer, Earl Palmer, Madelene L’Engle, Frederick Buechner, Annie Dillard, Walker Wangern, Philip Yancey and Luci Shaw. For more details, see the foundation’s web site http://www.cslewis.org/, email Amy Kimm on <cslewisfoundation@juno.com> or ring 1-888-CSLEWIS.

Memphis On March 27, 1997, the third annual conference on Christianity in the Academy (formerly the RRCPA Conference) will be held at the University of Memphis. This year the conference will focus on C. S. Lewis’s life, work, and legacy as the consummate Christian professor in honor of the centenary of his birth. Contact: Dr. Bruce Speck, The University of Memphis, English Department, Campus Box 526176, Memphis, TN 38152-6176. (901) 678-4588 or e-mail Dr. Bill Marty at: <wrmarty@memphis.edu>.

EVENTS

Belfast Society The Belfast Society C S Lewis Centenary Lecture will take place on Thursday 15 October 1998 at 6 pm in the Linen Hall Library, 17 Donegall Square North, Belfast BT1 5GD [details received too late to be included in our Programme].

A Grief Observed David Payne will take his one-man dramatisation of C. S. Lewis’s book on tour in the US in 1998. Contact David A Payne, Rising Image Productions, 508 Clearwater Court, Mt Juliet, Tennessee 37122 Tel: (1) 615 758 5991 Fax (1) 615 758 3353.

‘An Evening with C. S. Lewis’ Rev Trevor Gillian writes on his ‘Evenings with C. S. Lewis’;

-2 March 1988 Bangor: The public are welcome.

-18 November 1998 Campbell College, not Castlereagh, and, as the time is limited, this is ‘A Brief Introduction to CSL’ not ‘An Evening...’

-Fri 29th January, 1999, Heyn Hall, St Mark’s Church, Holywood Road, Belfast.

Organ Recitals Mr George Bayley of Tennessee, USA, will give two C. S.Lewis Memorial Organ Recitals next July (a) 17 July, in Holywood Parish Church, Co Down, and (b) 23 July in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast.

Omission Omitted in error from the Programme is this event:

-Wednesday 21 January 1998, Crawfordsburn, Co Down, Mr James O’Fee, C S Lewis and Crawfordsburn, Crawfordsburn Country Park Centre, 8 pm.

BROADCASTS

Television BBC Northern Ireland has commissioned an independent Producer, Mr Moore Sinnerton, to produce a major television documentary on the life of C. S. Lewis.

Film The C. S. Lewis Foundation of California plans to make a documentary film of Lewis’s life in 1998. They have been in touch with, and plan to co-operate with, Moore Sinnerton, the Independent Television Producer (see above).

Radio BBC Radio 3 will produce a 45-minute, networked, feature on C. S. Lewis from their Belfast studios in 1998.

Audio Tape ARMADA Productions of Bloomsbury, London, owns the rights to all the versions of Shadowlands. They hope to bring out, in both the UK and the USA, an audio tape of the adaption for radio broadcast on BBC Radio last September.

Video Mr Walter Hooper has very kindly donated to the Centenary Group a copy on video tape of the 2-hour version of the documentary film Through Joy and Beyond. The film was made in 1979 with Bob O’Donnell as Producer and Walter Hooper as Presenter. The Group hopes to store the video in the C. S. Lewis Archive in Belfast. The Group thanks Walter Hooper and Bob O’Donnell for their kindness.

THE WRITTEN WORD

A Pilgrim’s Leader: C. S. Lewis and the Gospel Today A Special issue of Mission & Ministry’, the magazine of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. Copies are $5.00 plus poatage. David Mills. Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, 311 Eleventh Street, Ambridge, PA 15003 email <DavidMills@tesm.edu>.

Articles Joshua Pong, a Lewis enthusiast in Hong Kong, is writing a series of articles on CSL for a Christian magazine in Taiwan to commemorate the Centenary.

MEMORIES

Little Lea Mrs Leone Lyons of Belfast writes: My interest in C S Lewis started when I was a child and my mother told us about going to Little Lea when she was a girl. Her mother knew the housekeeper and my mother used to visit her. I think that perhaps the housekeeper’s sister was sometimes there. Anyway, Mr Lewis Senior gave my mother permission to read in his library - all the newest books arrived from London! My mother’s dates were 1900-89.

Relatives of CSL’s have said that Albert, father of CSL, never borrowed a book from a library. If he wanted a book, he would buy it. Nor did he ever throw any of his books out. Which explains why CSL wrote that there were books everywhere in ‘Little Lea’.

Jacks Lewis’s close living relatives - Mrs Primrose Henderson of Belfast, Mrs Kelsie Erskine of Killyleagh, Co Down, and Mrs Ann Finlay of Edinburgh - confirm that CSL’s Irish relatives knew Lewis as JACKS during his entire life.

Photographs Mrs Henderson owns a family photograph album assembled by her mother Gundreda nee Ewart. The album has several photographs of C. S. Lewis, and some of Arthur Greeves. Mrs Henderson is donating copies of many of these photographs to the C. S. Lewis Archive in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast.

The album has a space where a photograph once was, and underneath is the handwritten legend , Jacks Lewis. Mrs Henderson says that this photograph was the original of the photograph which the Centenary Group used for the front cover of our brochure The C S Lewis Trail in Belfast and North Down.

The Youngest C. S. Lewis Mrs Kelsie Erskine of Killyleagh, Co Down, has a number of family photographs of C. S. Lewis, including the earliest extant photo of CSL as a baby with his mother! Mrs Erskine has kindly permitted copies to be placed in the Belfast archive.

Dinner with C. S. Lewis Mrs Ann Finlay (a close relation of CSL’s) reports of taking part at a family dinner with CSL and his new wife, Joy, at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn, in the 1950s.

IN BRIEF

Addition Douglas Gresham, step-son of CSL, has a second grandchild. Rebekah Meredith was born in Dublin on 21 November. Mother, baby and the family have our congratulations and best wishes.

99th Anniversary Tour The 99th anniversary of CSL’s birth fell on Saturday 29 November. To mark the occasion, the C S Lewis Centenary Group conducted a special Guided Tour of the C S Lewis Trail in Belfast. Thirteen members of the public attended.

‘Living the Legacy’ The C. S. Lewis Foundation held a Benefit Dinner with this title on Saturday, October 25, 1997, at Newport Beach, California, to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Speakers were Dr Stan Mattson, Warren Duffy and Douglas Gresham.

Walks Tony Wilson and Reggie McClure (of St Mark’s) plan to map the walks in the Holywood Hills loved by C. S. Lewis.

Oxford Mr Ronald Bresland, C. S. Lewis Centenary Research Fellow, who is based at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast, has set off on a two-week research visit to Oxford. In Oxford, Ronnie will stay at Magdalen College, as the guest of the College President, Mr Anthony Smith, whom the Group thanks greatly for his hospitality and kindness. Ronnie’s main work will be at the papers on Lewis held by the Bodleian Library, but he hopes to meet Walter Hooper, Mary Rogers, Michael Ward, and other Lewisian figures during his stay.

STOP PRESS

Shadowlands

A production by Elora Community Theatre at ‘Theatre on the Grand’ Fergus, Ontario, on February (1998) 13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22. More information can be had from Chuck Peeren, email <cgpeeren@interlog.com>.

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