Narnia chronicles propel Oxford to Hollywood 'A' list
As if the English city of Oxford, with its dreaming spires and historic university, did not have enough to attract visitors, Hollywood has once again propelled it into the limelight and on to the tourist map.
The backdrop for classics such as Brideshead Revisited and Iris, the city’s Christchurch College was the setting for Harry Potter’s adventures, New College bar was frequented by James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies and there is virtually no Oxford pub that did not feature in Inspector Morse.
The release of Christmas blockbuster The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, may not feature Oxford itself but visitors are flocking to the city to follow in the footsteps of the book’s author, Clive Staples Lewis.
Oxford’s resident Lewis expert, Ron Brind, is already taking bookings from around the world up until 2007 and international television news crews now jostle with American tourists for a seat in his minibus.
Brind, an amiable 60-year-old who was born and brought up in the city, has impressive credentials to back up his tour and recent book about Lewis’ Oxford.
As a boy, he used to shoot and fish on Lewis’ north-east Oxford estate, The Kilns, and befriended his stepson, Dougie – the son of American Jewess Joy Gresham whose relationship with Lewis is featured in the film Shadowlands.
He remembers Lewis as “just a grumpy old man” dressed in a trilby and gabardine coat, who sat at his desk, scribbling furiously in a fug of pipe smoke.
“Little did I know that he was writing something that would captivate millions of people throughout the world for decades,” he said.
Lewis was born in Belfast in 1895 but moved to Oxford in 1916 to take up a place at University College before becoming a fellow in English Literature at Magdalen College in 1925.
His most famous haunt and the first stop on Brind’s tour is the Eagle and Child public house, where Lewis’ literary group The Inklings, including Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien, would meet in the wooden-panelled Rabbit Room.
From there, visitors travel to the Holy Trinity church to see the pretty Narnia window and the pew where Jack, as Lewis was known to his friends, and Warnie, his brother, would sit each Sunday.
Much has been made of the religious allegories in the Narnia chronicles, but Brind is convinced Lewis was not a hugely religious character.
Lewis and his brother would always leave church early and Brind believes this was to make the pub before midday when the queues would begin to build up at the bar.
“He can’t have been that devout if he left early to go to the pub,” Brind said. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has been enjoyed by adults and children alike and I don’t think it leans towards any particular Christian message.”
Sadly, little has been made so far of Lewis’ connection to the city.
His gravestone in Holy Trinity’s churchyard is dirty and unkempt, and The Kilns is owned by an American foundation which houses students there and opens to visitors only by appointment.
If Brind were charging for his tour, he would soon be taking up his pipe and slippers for a comfortable retirement.
Instead, he has set up the Lewis Awareness Fund to which he asks visitors to donate and aims to eventually buy back the Kilns to reopen as a visitor attraction.
He said: “There is no shrine to Lewis, no bookshop, no museum, nothing at all. I think that’s a tragedy.
“I once did a survey in Oxford town centre asking locals who CS Lewis was. Nearly everyone responded: ’He was the one that wrote Alice in Wonderland, wasn’t he?’
“Of course now, with the release of the film, I think people are more aware of who he was and we should be making the most of that.
“I want the Kilns back to how it was in the 1950s. I would rebuild the old brick kilns in the gardens, open up the air raid shelter, look after the lake where Percy Shelley meditated.
“I would recreate the house’s old nicotine-stained ceilings, bring back the old sofas covered in animal hairs, put back all the book shelves and let them get dusty.
“Lewis’ home is part of British heritage and should be preserved for future generations.”
:: For more information about Ron Brind’s CS Lewis tours, visit http://www.picturesofengland.com/oxford/cslewistours/index.html.
