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The Man Behind Narnia

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The Man Behind Narnia

By: A. N. Wilson
Narrated by: James Warrior
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About this listen

It looks like a wardrobe, but open it up and it leads you back into a world of childhood - of fantasy. Lewis, now famed the world over as a children's author and religious apologist, was a university Professor who kept his private life a doggedly guarded secret. Living exclusively in the world of men, his life was really dominated by women - by his mother, whose death when he was a child scarred his whole life; by Jane Moore, with whom he lived for 33 years; and by Joy Davidman, the American he married. The mystery of Lewis is deep. He was a man who professed to be ruled by his head, but was manifestly governed by his heart.

In The Man Behind Narnia, A.N. Wilson, who wrote Lewis' full-length biography over 20 years ago, returns to the theme - having made a television documentary about Lewis and his work. He opens the wardrobe and finds many demons - some are Lewis', and some are his own. A.N. Wilson is the author of over forty books - 20 novels, biographies of C.S. Lewis, Tolstoy, and John Milton, a three-part history of the last 100 years, and stories for children.

©2013 A.N. Wilson (P)2014 Audible Inc. Art & Literature Authors Celebrity Heartfelt Fiction Biography
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I listened to this after listening to AN Wilson’s biography. The only book of Wilson’s I’d read before that was his biography of Jesus and the only CS Lewis books I’d read were the Narnia books ( The Magician’s nephew was my favourite) and the Pilgrim’s Regress. This was interesting but revealed far more about Wilson than Lewis.
What Lewis saw in either of his long term female partners remained a mystery. They both sounded far beneath him intellectually and quite boring. Perhaps he didn’t want an equal. Oxford university sounded a seriously dysfunctional environment full of self important people.

Interesting but shed more light on Wilson

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Wilsons return to Lewis after he has returned to Christianity might perhaps be regarded as more of a personal memoir than an addendum to a biography. It is not. Underlying the usual Wilson hubris is a really engaging story of a man who escaped hubris to become a "Really good man" and this made the book a pleasure to read.

Wilson and Lewis

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A N Wilson seems to have such a grudge against genuine Christians like Lewis that it has skewed his methods of history and analysis. It was difficult to listen to an historian with such an obvious bias and distaste for that which he is writing about. But the narrator read very well. I would, however, recommend Alistar McGrath's biography – far superior and more level headed.

A man with a vendetta

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