How Wartime Service Shaped CS Lewis and His Narnia Classics

Faith Facts

• CS Lewis served as a Royal Air Force chaplain during the Second World War, offering spiritual guidance to airmen defending Britain.
• Lewis opened his Oxford home to children evacuated from London, giving him firsthand insight into the fears and faith of young evacuees.
• Those wartime encounters directly informed the moral clarity and Christian imagery that define The Chronicles of Narnia.

During the dark days of the Blitz, Oxford professor CS Lewis welcomed London schoolchildren into his home while also ministering to Royal Air Force personnel facing mortal danger. These twin experiences of hospitality and frontline chaplaincy shaped his voice as a defender of the faith and gave birth to the world of Narnia.

Lewis understood that children separated from parents needed more than shelter; they needed stories rooted in courage, sacrifice, and the reality of good and evil.

“The war created an atmosphere in which the big questions of life and death could not be avoided,” he later reflected.

His weekly talks to airmen at RAF stations became the foundation for his BBC broadcast talks that reached millions and later formed the book Mere Christianity.

Those same airmen and evacuees populate the pages of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where four children discover a deeper reality behind ordinary wardrobes and lampposts.

“The Narnia stories grew out of the questions the children asked me during the war,” Lewis explained.

As Remembrance Sunday approaches, the life of CS Lewis reminds Christian readers that ordinary acts of service and hospitality can bear extraordinary fruit for the Kingdom.

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