C.S. Lewis's Oxford

Simon Horobin has produced a gem of an addition to the Lewis corpus. His angle of approach to the life and work of C.S. Lewis is imaginative, engaging, enthralling, and leaves the reader wanting more once the final page is read.I have been a student of all things Lewis for many years. During that time I have read many biographies and the like. Horobin's book rates in the top 10% of all the great titles included in that list.

Anyone who enjoys reading CS Lewis - whether his apologetic, fictional or academic works - will surely enjoy this look into the wardrobe of his working life and the background to his literary output. It is almost entirely centred on Oxford, as the title suggests, with only one chapter about his Cambridge decade.The author gives a chapter each to seven places in Oxford with close links or associations with Lewis, followed by one about Cambridge and one about Lewis’s global legacy. There are many fascinating insights and details as well as personal revelations, even some that may be upsetting, showing that our idol has feet of clay - but that is as it should be.Sometimes we descend into a welter of detail about lectures, papers, essays, books and academia, politics and all. Sometimes the book drifts into being a rather dry recounting of facts. Soon enough, however, we emerge blinking into the light of discovering more about the human being behind the famous name.The book is, of course, primarily about CS Lewis, not Oxford, yet we do dip into the life and limb of the city, even if only on Lewis’s terms. This is neither a biography nor a city guide but it takes us not really behind the scenes but into the scenes wherever the man and the city crossed paths. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be ‘CS Lewis in Oxford’.