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Hello, my name is Simon Horrigan, and I'm a tutor in English at Maudlin College in Oxford, and I'm going to take you on a tour of C.S. Lewis Oxford.

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We're going to start our tour on the high street at the entrance to maudlin college, although this isn't where C.S. Lewis, his Oxford career began.

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It's the place that he's most clearly linked with. The Shadowlands film that tells the story of his marriage to the writer.

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Joy Davidson is set in Maudlin. Even though by then, Lewis had actually moved to Cambridge.

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It's that maudlin that he got his first job as a tutorial fellow in English and where he spent nearly 30 years.

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Entering the college through the gate beside the Great Tower, we find ourselves in St. John's quite.

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Opposite is the president's lodgings. Which is where Louis was admitted to the Fellowship of Modelling in 1925.

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In a ceremony that remains unchanged today.

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Having sworn to uphold the statutes of the college, Lewis shook hands with all of the assembled fellows who wished him joy.

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The choice of words seems significant, given Lewis's later use of it in his autobiography titled Surprised by Joy,

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where it refers to a specific kind of longing that left him unsatisfied and which ultimately led to his conversion to Christianity.

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But also, given his later relationship with Joy Davidson.

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Turning into the cloisters, we passed the college chapel on my right, where Louis attended daily services following his conversion.

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There's a plaque identifying his usual seat.

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Coming out of the cloisters, we're confronted by the magnificent neo Georgian stone building that overlooks the deer park,

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known as the new building, in which Lewis had a set of rooms on the second floor of Staircase three.

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The middle of the building, as you face it. It was in those rooms that the inklings met on a Thursday night.

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Reading extracts from their works in progress. During those meetings, Lewis read aloud from his first work of Christian apologetics.

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The problem of pain. And the first of his science fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet.

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It was also here that Louis converted to Judaism as memorably described in surprise by joy, where he writes.

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You must picture me alone in that room in maudlin night after night feeling.

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Whenever my mind lifted, even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.

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His later conversion from Thayer's into Christianity was encouraged by a conversation with two of his friends

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and fellow inklings J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson during and after dinner stroll around Addison's walk.

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One of Lewis's favourite books that takes a circular route around the college's water meadow.

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If we follow that path now along the river, it brings us to Holywell Ford.

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Where there's a plaque with a poem by Lewis called What the Bird said early in the year, which is set on Addison's walk.

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Tracing all steps back to the Porter's lodge, we emerge on the high street again, heading west towards the city centre.

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On our left, we pass the East Gate Hotel. It was in the bar of this hotel, but Lewis and Tolkien would meet for a drink on Monday mornings,

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reading poetry to each other, swapping gossip or just indulging in bawdy puns.

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It was also here that Louis first met Joey Davidson.

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Joey had begun writing to Lois after reading his apologetic books and then came to England in the hope of meeting him in person.

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Continuing down the high street brings us past the examination schools.

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Well, Louis lectured to large audiences of eager undergraduates.

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His hugely popular introductory lectures on mediaeval and Renaissance literature can be read in the posthumously published book The Discarded Image.

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Further along, we come to University College, affectionately known as UNIV, which is where Lewis spent his undergraduate years.

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Lewis came up to UNIV and Trinity to the summit of 1916, an unusual time to begin.

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Since this is traditionally the end of the academic year.

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But of course, this was not a normal time to start a university career.

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There were very few students in residence, as most were in action in France.

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Indeed, Lewis was quickly transferred to Keeble College. Which had been requisitioned by the army.

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Where he began military training prior to being sent to the Western Front.

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When he was not busy training, Lewis studied for the university's entrance exams, known as response tions in Latin, Greek and maths.

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While his Latin and Greek were up to scratch, the West struggled in maths and so received instruction from a tutor at Hertford College.

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But this didn't stop him failing the exam miserably.

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It was fortunate for Lewis that the university introduced an exemption for soldiers returning from action.

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Well, he may never have become a student at Oxford. Lewis was sent to the Western Front in 1917, where he fought in the Somerset Light Infantry.

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He was wounded in April 1918 and sent back to England to convalesce.

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He was finally discharged from hospital and demobilised from the army in December of 1918.

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Returning home to Ireland for Christmas and then back to Oxford in January of 1919.

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To recommence his studies. Most of Lewis's fellow students were not so lucky.

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Those who had survived the war, many of them found themselves psychologically unable to return to Oxford.

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Lewis dealt with the trauma by immersing himself in his studies.

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His degree was in literary human race, which literally means more humane letters.

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Essentially, it's the study of the languages, literature, history and philosophy of the classical world.

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At the end of his first year, Lewis sat the exams known as moderation, and he was awarded a first.

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At the end of the third year, he sat exams for the final on his school, receiving another first.

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This achievement is all the more remarkable, given that his lifestyle was not that of a typical undergraduate student.

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During this time, Lewis was looking after the mother of his army friend Paddy Moore, who had been killed in action, and her daughter Maureen,

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leading a peripatetic life moving between various unsuitable residences in Haddington, a village on the outskirts of the city.

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Armed with his double first, Louis looked around for academic employment, applying for teaching positions in philosophy, but without any success.

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His tutor suggested he would improve his chances if he spent a further year studying for another degree.

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This time in the English language and literature.

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In the 1920s, the Oxford English course was heavily focussed on the language and literature of the Middle Ages.

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One of Lewis's great passions.

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Although he was rather snippy about the people who studied English compared to those who read classics, Lewis took up this suggestion.

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And in 1923, he graduated with yet another first.

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After another round of failed job applications, Lewis was offered a temporary teaching position at Univ.

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Filling in for his philosophy tutor who was spending the year teaching in the states.

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In nineteen twenty five, they successfully applied for the post of tutor in English at Maudlin.

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The financial security this position gave him enabled Lois and Mrs. Moore to purchase a house in Haddington called the Kilns in 1930.

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And it was here that Lewis lived until his death in 1963.

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The House is open to visitors today and has been kept as it would have looked during Lewis's day.

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Although none of the furnishings or decoration are original, including the yellow nicotine stains on the ceiling.

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If we continue further down the high street, we passed the University Church of St Mary, the Virgin.

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Well, Lewis gave his famous sermon, the weight of glory in 1941.

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Pausing at the side entrance to the church in St. Mary's passage,

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we can see the doorway that has given rise to many stories about the origins of Narnia.

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Here we find two carved phones said to be the inspiration for Mr Thomas above a doorway with

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a carving of a face surrounded by foliage taken to be that of a lion with a shaggy mane.

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Beside the door, there is a Victorian lamp post.

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The story goes that one snowy night. Lewis came out of the church through this door and found himself confronted by a lamppost, a phone and the lion.

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Giving him all the ingredients of the first of The Narnia Chronicles, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

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The problem with this attractive claim is that Louis himself offered an alternative one.

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According to Lewis, the story began with pictures that he had been seeing in his head since his teens.

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One of a thorn in a snowy wood carrying parcels, another of a witch on a sleigh.

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It was in his 40s that he decided it was finally time to see if he could write a story about them.

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And at the same time, he says he found himself dreaming about lions.

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And so, as he puts it, Aslan bounded in.

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This reminds us that while Lewis was no doubt influenced by the Oxford in which he spent most of his adult life.

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His fictional writings are primarily works of imagination.

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But this hasn't stopped people trying to identify real life locations and influences.

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There are rival lampposts laying claim to be the model for the one that shines in London, based in Cambridge, London and Belfast.

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The wardrobe from the Lewis family home of Little Leigh in the Belfast suburbs built by Lewis, his grandfather.

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Now resides in a museum. Wheaton College outside Chicago.

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But it's claimed to be the inspiration behind Lucy's portal into Narnia is somewhat debateable.

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This wardrobe doesn't have a looking glass built into the door, which is specifically mentioned in the story.

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Returning to the high street, we passed the motor in which is where Louis first met the poet T.S. Eliot.

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Who endeared himself to Louis by observing how much older he appeared in person.

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Leading to a rather frosty tea party. Arriving at the end of the high street, we turn right into corn market and then keep going north up St. Giles,

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as far as the famous Eagle and child pub, were left.

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This pub, known to the inklings as the bird and baby was the location of that Tuesday lunchtime drinking sessions.

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The group was quite informal, there was no strict membership and no minutes or records were made of their discussions.

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As well as Lewis and Tolkien, it included other members of the English faculty like Lord David Cecil,

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Friends and fellow writers like Owen Barfield and Charles Williams.

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Lewis's brother Warnie, who came to live with Lewis at the kilns after retiring from the army in 1932 and Lewis is Dr Robert Havard.

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Name inklings was borrowed from that of an undergraduate reading Rupert unit that Lewis had attended.

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Tolkien described it as a pleasantly ingenious pun, suggesting people with vague or half formed intonations and ideas, plus those who dabble in ink.

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Tolkien's major contribution to the inklings was, of course, the vast project to write a sequel to The Hobbit.

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What became The Lord of the Rings finally published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955.

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Charles Williams, best known for his fantasy thrillers, read from his novel All Hallows Eve.

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David Cecil offered updates from his biographical writings.

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While warning, Lewis read from his work on French history. This isn't the final stop on our journey.

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A few doors down, St Giles, we find number 42 now a dental practise, but in 1956, the registry office where Louis and Joy Davidson were married.

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This was a marriage of convenience intended to allow Joy to become a British citizen and remain in England with her two sons.

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And so avoid having to return to the states to an unhappy marriage.

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But shortly after their wedding, Joy discovered that she had terminal cancer.

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This sudden diagnosis prompted Louis to recognise the depth of his feelings for her, leading him to propose a full Christian marriage.

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Which was held at her hospital bed in 1957. Thanks to the cancer going into remission for a time,

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the couple were able to enjoy several years of marriage visiting Ireland and Greece before she died in 1960.

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Nurse's relationship with Julie Davidson was one reason for a cooling in his friendship with Tolkien.

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Another was Lewis's devotion to Charles Williams,

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who joined the inklings when staff of the Oxford University Press moved from London to Oxford during the war.

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Williams wrote to Lewis full of praise for his first scholarly work, The Allegory of Love.

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The Study of mediaeval allegorical poetry while Lewis was a great admirer of Williams's novel The Place of the Lion.

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Tolkien rather resented the way that Lewis brought Williams along to their meetings at the East Gate and as a committed philologist,

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one who studies the history of languages, he didn't share their more literary interests.

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In 1945, Williams was rushed into hospital for an emergency operation.

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Lewis called into the Radcliffe Infirmary just a little further north Up St. Giles

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to visit him on his way to a meeting of the inklings of the eagle and child,

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only to discover that Williams had died. Lewis was shattered by the loss, the inklings would never be the same again.

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Williams is buried in Oxford's Holywell cemetery next to St Christchurch, the end of Long Wall Street, along with another inkling Hugo Dyson.

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In 1954, the U.S. was invited to apply for a new chair of mediaeval and Renaissance literature at the University of Cambridge.

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He initially dismissed the idea since he couldn't imagine uprooting his life and family at the kilns and moving to Cambridge.

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It was only when Tolkien intervened, pointing out that it would be possible to commute between the two cities that Lewis was willing to be considered.

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He was unanimously elected to a position that he held until his retirement, prompted by ill health in 1963.

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When asked which Cambridge college he would like to be associated with,

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Lewis chose Maudlin since he didn't want to confuse the celestial civil service by switching his allegiance to a different saint.

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But despite spending those nine years at Cambridge, the continues to be associated with Oxford.

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Today. As witnessed by the huge numbers of tourists who flock to the city in search of Lewis and his legacy.