Narnia's comeback: Narnia. It's a word we'll all be hearing a lot this month. The much-hyped film version of Belfast-born CS Lewis's most popular title in his seven-book fantasy series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, opens here on Friday, directed by Andrew Adamson, who made both Shrek films.
The Narnia books have never been out of print and whether you come to them as child or adult, Lewis's distinctive, haunting world leaves its impression. Prior to Adamson's film, there have been attempts to bring Narnia to stage and screen, but none to date have cut the mustard. Converting popular texts to screen has always been controversial, but it's certain this film will bring a new tranche of readers to the books.
I loved my Narnia books, although, like all objects of love, they were capable of betraying you. I once barricaded my bedroom door, pulled my coat around me and stepped with closed eyes and utter confidence into the wardrobe - banging my forehead hard on its back wall. The discovery at eight that Narnia did not exist outside my imagination was a deeper and more lasting childhood disappointment than outgrowing Santa Claus at four.
When I worked out in a rereading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, aged about nine, that Aslan was supposed to be Christ, I distinctly remember feeling horribly embarrassed and somehow cheated, although not knowing at the time why. Although I continued to reread it, I never liked that book as much again, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader became, and remains, my favourite of the seven. As an adult, I can see that the Christian references jarred the story, ruined for me as a child a glorious fantasy by introducing elements from my public "real" world that I definitely didn't want to think about. I had enough of the dying and resurrection of Christ being discussed at length each Easter in my convent school, and simply didn't want to encounter it also in my own intensely private world of books.
It's impossible for me to think of Narnia without thinking of Pauline Baynes's exquisitely observed drawings, which illustrated the series and which turned up in my dreams as a child. Years later, I attended a party at Claridges in London to celebrate the 80th birthday of Puffin Books' founding editor, Kaye Webb. (Kaye had the original artwork for the cover of The Last Battle on the dining room wall of her Maida Vale flat, and when at dinner there I always sat on the side of the table where I could see the painting.) At the birthday party, I sat next to Pauline Baynes and thanked her in person for the pleasure she had given me as a child. So, in a way, I did access Narnia after all.
CS Lewis - A Celebration, a one-day seminar, takes place today at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen's University Belfast. More details from 028-907 1070 or www.qub.ac.uk
The film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, opens on Friday
