The work of the great children’s author, C. S. Lewis, is indelibly written across my childhood. His most famous image, the wardrobe, from ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ is commemorated in Belfast, his birthplace. How moving it is, that it is an adult, not a child, who is opening that wardrobe door – to the realm of fantasy and dreams…
Apart from a writer of fiction, he was also a philosopher. I love this brilliant quote in which he warns against delay – there is, he counsels, never a perfect moment to begin:
“Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice has been put to right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes” (50).
What an expansive and imaginative vision he had.
I also recommend the biographical film ‘Shadowlands’ which movingly brings his life to the screen.
