C.S. Lewis spot in Poets’ Corner

A plaque was unveiled in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey last Friday to commemorate the author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, writes Abigail Frymann. 

The plaque was inscribed with one of Lewis’ most quoted lines: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

The author’s last pupil, Dr Francis Warner gave a reading, along with one of Lewis’ stepsons, Douglas Gresham, and Helen Cooper, professor of medieval and renaissance English at Cambridge, the chair held by Lewis at the end of his life.

Walter Hooper, the Chronicles of Narnia author’s former secretary, was visibly moved as he lay a wreath on the plaque.

The choir, under music director James O’Donnell, sang a specially commissioned setting of one of Lewis’ poems composed by Paul Mealor, whom Mr O’Donnell also commissioned to compose a work for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.