Remembering C. S. Lewis on his birthday. Did you know ….. Lewis destroyed the first version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when his friends criticized it; he then rewrote it from scratch. Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends. They both served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings. According to Lewis' memoir Surprised by Joy, he was baptized in the Church of Ireland, but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to the Anglican Communion at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England". His faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Clive Staples Lewis was a British novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, broadcaster, lec