The Lion’s World: A journey into the heart of Narnia

The Lion’s World – A Journey into the Heart of Narnia – Rowan Williams

‘Reading Rowan Williams on C.S. Lewis is like watching two old friends in animated discussion of great, powerful themes. It helps that both are (of course) highly literate: Shakespeare, Thomas Merton, Augustine and others flit across the pages. It helps more, particularly for those just discovering Lewis (or indeed Williams) that both write with lucid and engaging clarity. But what really counts is that, as with the two on the Emmaus Road, we constantly sense a third presence, that of the Lion who will not let us rest in our own little self-deceits but who constantly challenges us to discover the larger joys of his new creation. Those who have loved Narnia since childhood will here discover fresh and sometimes disturbing depths of meaning and power. Those who don’t know it will be stimulated to read the stories for themselves. Those who have tried to debunk Lewis and his children’s books will find Williams more than a match for them, not as an uncritical apologist but as a wise and humane expositor. How fortunate, and appropriate, for Lewis’s old Cambridge college to have Williams as its new Master.