C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis was born 29 November 1898, baptized in the Church of Ireland, and lost his faith entirely by adolescence. He held a literature post at Magdalen College, Oxford from 1925, where he became close friends with J. R. R. Tolkien - both active in the Inklings, an informal Oxford literary circle. At 32, influenced by Tolkien and others, Lewis returned to Anglicanism and became what he called "an ordinary layman of the Church of England." That conversion reshaped everything: wartime radio broadcasts on Christianity brought him wide acclaim, and he turned out more than 30 books across fiction and apologetics - The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, The Space Trilogy, Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain. In 1956 he married American writer Joy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at 45. Lewis moved to Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1954 and died there of kidney failure on 22 November 1963, age 64.