The dark, winter months are a great time for curling up with a book, and I find that it's also a time when my thoughts turn to books that I loved when I was a child.
A particular favuorite was C.S. Lewis's The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of The Chronicles of Narnia. C.S.Lewis spent some of his youth in the Surrey Hills area of the UK where I live. He arrived to stay in the house of a private tutor to whom his father sent him to finish his education, up until then, a very unhappy period of his life.
IIn his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis describes his time under the tutelage of William T. Kirkpatrick, the retired headmaster of his father's old school, as one of the happiest of his life. The Surrey Hills are a beautiful part of south-east England, still unspoiled in spite of their proximity to London. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they must have been even more idyllic. Lewis went on to spend the majority of the rest of his life at Oxford University, but he retained a fondness for Surrey. It's thought that Kirkpatrick was the model for the professor in The Chronicles of Narnia.
Narnia fans were delighted when, a few years ago, the conservators of Banstead Common, an area not far from the Surrey Hills, decided to commemorate Lewis's famous stories with a sculpture trail created from standing deadwood. It’s something that will, I'm sure, give great pleasure to many future generations of adults and children.
I'd love to hear about your favourite childhood books and any stories associated with them that you'd like to share.
