Douglas Gresham

A child prodigy, she graduated high school at 14, college at 19, and got her master's degree shortly after.

She joined the Communist Party during the Great Depression, married a writer named William Lindsay Gresham, and had two sons, David and Douglas.

But Joy's marriage was a disaster.

Gresham was an alcoholic and a serial cheater.

In 1959, despite knowing her cancer could return at any moment, they took a trip to Greece, which Joy had always dreamed of seeing.

Lewis, who hated traveling, went for her.

Douglas Gresham, Joy's son, who became Lewis's stepson, later said Lewis was finally truly happy during those years.

At 60 years old, for the first time in his life, Lewis was in love and beloved in return.

The grave is under a larch in the corner of the churchyard.

Douglas Gresham was the only family mourner.

Warney was not present, alas.

I saw Owen Barfield, George Sayre, and John Lawler, a good mark to him, among others.

Well,

this was actually C.S. Lewis's preferred internal chronology eventually, and it was later officially endorsed by his stepson, Douglas Gresham, who manages the estate.

But I've talked to so many lifelong readers who aggressively push back against that numbering.

Oh, they despise it.

I still, I read him all the time in everything I can.

I've noted on my slide here that anything by Walter Hooper, when it comes to biographies and books about Lewis, there's no end, of course, but anything by Walter Hooper, his personal secretary near the end of his life, and Douglas Gresham, not that they wrote a lot, but just if you ever see their name, Walter Hooper or Douglas Gresham, his stepson that he received, that he got when he married Joy, Joy's son, Douglas, He became a godly Christian man, and he writes about his stepfather very lovingly.

But, yeah, thank you.

The one thing, and I just want to pass this along to our listeners.

... like thousands of other children, and he replied to her, and he replied in a letter which is now in the special collections at Queen's University, and it was to Ann Waller, and she lived in, um, Suffolk on a chicken farm.

And I read the letter in Douglas Gresham's study in 1997, and it really, it hit my heart, and it was Lewis talking to a 10-year-old, uh, child, but talking like this, not, not like that.

And he basically explained why, um, Aslan give himself up, and said, "If Narnia had existed and, like our world, had gone wrong and God wanted to save it, how would He save a land of talking beasts? He would still save it by sending His Son, but He would send His Son as the King of the beasts.

In the Bible, Christ is known as the Lion of Judah.