I became a Lewis fan conventionally, through the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, which my grandmother gave me when I was a child. Locals and tourists, speaking myriad languages, walked and biked along the cobbles. On a fall afternoon, I met Rob Walters, an author and a guide with Official Oxford Walking Tours, at the central Radcliffe Square, which is surrounded by majestic college buildings. Lewis is perhaps most famous today for the “Chronicles of Narnia” series - though he found success in his satire, like “The Screwtape Letters,” and religious defenses, like “Mere Christianity.” As the 60th anniversary of his death nears, it felt timely to retrace Lewis’s steps around the city that so greatly affected his life and works.

Tolkien - the future author of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” - and others founded the Inklings, a literary group, 90 or so years ago, and where early notions of Narnia and Middle-earth would surface. Lewis, and it’s where he found Christian faith, friendships and domestic happiness. Oxford was the backdrop to his student days, and to his career as an academic and as the author known as C.S. The city that made an enchanting first impression maintained its effect on him for a lifetime. Lewis, an 18-year-old Irishman who went by Jack, was visiting Oxford University to take the entrance examination. “The place has surpassed my wildest dreams: I never saw anything so beautiful, especially on frosty moonlit nights,” he wrote in a letter to his father. When Clive Staples Lewis arrived in Oxford in 1916, he was enchanted by the city’s Gothic stone buildings and spires reaching skyward.

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