Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland Nov. 29, 1893. He was educated through private tutors until he was ten and then bounced around various schools, finding most of them to be horrid environments. At fifteen he went to study under another private tutor and became an atheist.
Lewis won a scholarship to Oxford and then volunteered in WWI, returning to Oxford after the war.
At 33, following a discussion with JRR Tolkein, Lewis returned to the Christian faith of his youth, influenced also by the writer G.K. Chesterton.
During WWII, Lewis did a number of popular radio shows called "Mere Christianity" in which he explained the faith in simple terms with vivid illustrations. Later these were edited and compiled into a book of the same name.
Lewis eventually married the American Joy Gresham late in his life. He had corresponded with Joy and eventually she moved to England. She was the divorced (due to alcoholism and physical abuse) wife of American novelist William Gresham. Lewis' brother Warnie said that Joy was the only woman Lewis had met who was his intellectual equal (they played Scrabble together simultaneously in English, French, Greek and Latin). They were first married in a civil ceremony so that Joy could stay in England and later, on her deathbed when she was dying from bone cancer they were married in a religious ceremony. This had taken some doing because at the time, the marriage would have been prevented by Joy's divorce. Joy miraculously recovered, however, and she and Lewis had a few more months more together, taking a holiday in Greece, before the cancer came back and she died.
Lewis died a few years later on November 22, 1963, the same day as JFK and Aldous Huxley.
Further information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis
Surprised by Joy - Lewis' autobiography of his youth and conversion
A Grief Observed - Lewis working through the death of Joy
The Narnian - Alan Jacobs' excellent biography of C.S. Lewis
If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.
Matthew Popkes
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