This instalment of the Dalek Game is obviously for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and of course for Pauline Baynes’ illustrations which are Narnia for me, and whose White Witch (so elegant) is the one true Jadis, no matter how magnificent Tilda Swinton was.
Narnia infused my childhood – they are among the earliest books I remember reading (and being read, and reading aloud every year). For me they are the standard of wonder, the true quality of fairytale and fantasy – almost tangible, utterly ethereal, the best of the mundane and the least trammelled by the dullness of the world. Through the door and into the woods, through the desert and over the sea, forests and hunts, high romance and low loving adventure, “once upon a time” and all stories (they begin, after all, when Sherlock Holmes was living in Baker Street and the Bastables were digging for treasure in Lewisham Road), and always. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, which gained the third foothold in my heart, they were almost within reach, and unlike The Chronicles of Prydain (which I learned to love between Tolkien and Lewis) they never ended. They barely even began.
And here is a bonus drawing – originally for a card, with a touch of greenery added for current purposes:
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Firstly, love your new header. Beautiful. I like that your witch has black hair, as she should. Unlike the movie witch.
“A devilish temper she had, But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.”
She was, she was.
I like this a LOT. Perhaps somewhere C.S. Lewis is smiling and thinking “Daleks? Now why didn’t I think of that?”
It… first aired the day after he died.
I only just worked that out.
That is trivia I need to remember. Freaky!
22 November 1963 (same day as JFK, which I knew – more trivia) / 23 November 1963.
(Aldous Huxley also died the same day as C.S. Lewis)
That is QUITE a coincidence – never would have known that. Yet another benefit of hanging around this literary salon. :-)
What a wonderful Susan!
Thank you!
Wonderful!!!
Great to read about the wonder these books infused in you. I did not discover Narnia or Tolkien during my childhood and only came to both as an adult. They still have inspired a lot of wonder in me, particularly Tolkien’s work, but I regret that they weren’t among the many books I used as a child to fuel my imagination.
It is a great shame…
Better to have discovered Narnia as an adult then not at all!
I did have “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “Half-way across the Galaxy and turn left” to fuel my adolescent imagination – plus my own drawings of what I thought was the future :-)