Shadowlands

The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of books that have made C. S. Lewis a perennial favorite of children, have their roots in Northern Ireland.

Jack never lost his boyhood love of Northern Ireland - especially his County Down - even after he moved permanently to The Kilns in Oxford. He once told a friend "Heaven is Oxford placed into County Down."

While still a youngster, Jack studied briefly at Campbell College, in Belfast, before his father sent him to boarding school in England. But that was after his mother died and before he wrote about the place where fantastic childhood imaginings had come alive in his own mind.

The "Wardrobe," in the Chronicles of Narnia, was real only for him at that early date. Not until later would his imaginings come alive not just for himself, but for millions of children throughout the world.

Jack left for England, his faith shaken by his mother’s death. And it was in England, at the boarding school, where the future Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, lost his faith altogether:

He had, in fact, become an atheist.