C S Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, is to be honoured at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
A memorial stone will be unveiled at a service on November 22 next year to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. It was little marked at the time because of President John F Kennedy’s assassination the same day.
His Narnia books — which have sold more than 100 million copies and been adapted for stage, TV and film — used Christian themes mixed with the myths and fairy tales that fascinated Belfast-born Lewis in childhood. He is less known as a poet but from his youth he avidly wrote poems marked by atheism before his firm adoption of the Christian faith.
The Abbey’s Canon Theologian Vernon White said: “Lewis was an extraordinarily imaginative thinker and writer who was able to convey Christianity in a way that made it credible and attractive.”
