It's my cake day! 4 years here with you lovable weirdos. Here's a post about my namesake.

"There was Coghill, there was Lord David Cecil, there were Wrenn, and C.T. Onions, but they were all, however impressive in themselves, foothills in the shadow of the towering grandeur of Lewis... The prospect of spending an hour every week closeted with the most eminent scholar in his field was eclipsed only by the terror of having to read an essay for his criticism - to expose one's puny efforts to the full force of perhaps the most powerful and best-trained intellect in the world." - George Bailey, and American student at Oxford.

"[Lewis] was the best-read man of his generation, one who read everything and remembered everything he read." - William Empson.

"The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that." - Air Chief Marshal Sir David Hardman, regarding Lewis' radio talks during WWII.

“If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.” - The New Yorker.

"Interesting? Yes, he's certainly that. You'll never get to the bottom of him." - J.R.R. Tolkien.

"Jack (note - Jack is what his family and friends called him) once took a guest for an early morning walk on the Magdalen College grounds... after a very wet night. Presently the guest brought his attention to a curious lump of cloth hanging on a bush. "That looks like my hat," said Jack; then, joyfully, "It is my hat." And, clapping the sodden mass on his head, he continued his walk..." - Warren "Warnie" Lewis reminiscing about C.S. Lewis, his brother.

Here are a few fun facts about C.S. Lewis:

1. In one of his lettters responding to a young child that had written to him, he divulged that his favorite thing to do while taking a bath was to pretend to be a hippo, with only his nose sticking out of the water.

2. Growing up, he owned a dog named Tim that lived to a very old age - about Tim, he once said, "Poor Tim, though I loved him, was the most undisciplined, unaccomplished, and dissipated-looking creature that ever went on four legs. He never exactly obeyed you; he sometimes agreed with you."

3. After suffering a heart attack in 1961, he lapsed into a coma and was not expected to recover. However, after he had received his last rites, he surprised everyone by waking up and instantly asking for a cup of tea.

4. He never learned to type - all of his book manuscripts were handwritten. This was partly due to the fact that he was born with only one joint in his thumbs, but mostly because of his disdain for the sound typewriters make, believing that they took the elegance out of language.

5. Lewis knew Greek, French, Latin, English, Icelandic, Old Norse, and Italian.

6. He fought in the trenches of WWI, arriving at the front line on his 19th birthday.

6. Though he excelled in the fields he enjoyed (philosophy, literature, languages, etc...) he repeatedly failed to get accepted to Oxford simply because he could not do basic math. The only reason he was eventually accepted was because Oxford waived the entrance exam for World War I veterans.

7. He was good friends with J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, along with many other famous writers, including Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and Dorothy Sayers.

8. His lectures while he was a professor at Oxford (and Magdalen) were nearly always given to standing-room only crowds, regardless of the topic - he was a very popular speaker.

9. His voice was "the second most recognizable voice in Britain, after Winston Churchill."
Very few recordings of him have survived (and so far, no surviving video footage has surfaced) but you can listen to one of the handful of recordings that has survived the decades here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHxs3gdtV8A