‘I have been an Edmund in my time’
The stepson of C S Lewis tells Anna Arco why he identifies with the Narnia character who struggles to find redemption
27 June 2008

Douglas Gresham was raised by C S Lewis after him mother’s death in 1960

Meeting C S Lewis's stepson Douglas Gresham is almost as exciting as meeting the quiet don himself. The son of Joy Davidman, the American convert who corresponded with Lewis and eventually married him when she lay dying of cancer, Gresham lived with "Jack" as a child.

Dressed in a white roll-neck jumper, white trousers and dark knee-high riding boots, a large silver Maltese pectoral cross dangling over his chest, white-haired and bearded, he looks like a character out of one of his stepfather's Narnia books. As one would imagine of a mage, his presence dominates. One gets a sense of mastered energy and composure, matched with assertive, slightly aggressive, confidence. Despite the white hair, it is hard to believe he is 63. He takes control of the interview immediately. In short, Mr Gresham is intimidating.

He is in London when I meet him, holding interviews in advance of the release of Prince Caspian, the second of the seven Narnia books to be turned into a film. As with the 2005 adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Mr Gresham has been a co-producer on the film.

Today he works mainly as a consultant of the C S Lewis Company, which handles everything to do with the Lewis legacy. He reads through every adaptation that is ever made of any of the Narnia books, including school plays, and gives his approval or his veto, making sure that certain elements of C S Lewis's thought are not cut out. But Gresham has worn many hats. At one point he was an on-and-off cattle farmer (hence the boots) in Australia, at another, a film actor. While in Australia he was a celebrity interviewer for a radio channel and knows all the tricks of the trade. He was a counsellor for victims of child abuse (hence the measured voice) and a preacher (hence the rhetorical power) after he found Jesus.

Gresham is often described as an evangelical Christian though he deplores the phrase.

"I don't know what evangelical Christianity means," he says. "Yes, I've been described as an evangelical Christian and I don't know why. People just like to put people in boxes. I am a non-denominational Christian who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ and follows Christ himself. I not only believe in Jesus, I believe Jesus. I believe in what he said and I try to put it into practice. Now, if that makes me an evangelical Christian so well and good. But I've met an awful lot of evangelical Christians with whom I wouldn't want to be seen dead, let alone alive. There are evangelical Christian groups whom I find to be way off-track." In which sense? I ask. "Legalistic rather than genuinely Christian, following books of rules that they themselves have invented rather than following what Christ teaches. All of that kind of thing."

Does he think that of the Catholic Church? "No, that's different. The Catholic Church has an awful lot wrong with it, part of the reason is that they too have leant too much on the intuitions of men, rather than just sticking to what Jesus had said.



"Also, the Roman Catholic Church in different places at different times has made the conscious decision to become a political entity or a ruling entity and I don't think that's what any Christian church is supposed to do or supposed to be. The Roman Catholic Church demands not only that people believe implicitly and act upon what they teach today but that you are ready to believe implicitly and act upon what they decide to teach tomorrow," Gresham says.

But despite his objections to the Church, he says that he has met some "very, very fine Christians in the Roman Catholic Church" and that he admires "some of them enormously". He mentions "Ron Tolkien". His casual reference is to J R R Tolkien, who wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy, was a Catholic and was a friend of Lewis. After Joy Davidman's death, Lewis looked after both Douglas and David Gresham, her sons from a previous marriage, whom he had adopted. One of the Narnia books, The Horse and His Boy, is dedicated to the Gresham boys. During his years in Oxford, Gresham met Lewis's friends from the Inklings, the group of writers and medievalists who met regularly at the Eagle and Child pub to discuss Norse poetry or the novels they were writing.

Both Lewis and Davidman were born-again Christians. Lewis entered the Church of England aged 30 and became a renowned Christian apologist. Davidman, who came from a Jewish family and had become an atheist discovered Christianity. It was their faith that brought them together. Davidman started writing to Lewis after her conversion, visited him in Oxford and married him civilly in order to stay in England. Later, when Davidman was in hospital they were married in the Church of England.

I ask whether Mr Gresham's own path to his brand of Christianity was influenced by his mother and stepfather's faiths.

"Not so much my mother," Gresham says, fixing me with his intense eyes. "She was too busy dying. It took her four years. But certainly Jack's influence has been huge.

"I've always believed in God and believed in Jesus and met him in a very graphic way, as is described in my autobiography The Lenten Lands, when I needed him most. He came to me in a churchyard. I didn't become what most people would call 'Christian', even though I believed, even the devil believes in Christ, but I didn't want to submit myself to the authority of anyone but myself for many years."

Turning to the Narnia series, which caused a furore after the Disney adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was criticised by some for its supposedly overt "Christian message", we talk about the books. Lewis's Narnian mythopoeia is not exclusively Christian, says Gresham; rather it draws on all myths and the truths that they portray. Gresham has been quoted as saying that he was Edmund Pevensie, the Peter-like character who betrays his brother and sisters but eventually finds forgiveness and redemption. I ask whether this is true.

"I have been an Edmund in my time," he replies. "Most of us have been most of the characters in the Narnia books at various times in our development.

"Yes, I was in that situation for a really long time, but then I found that I had to take a good long look at myself and realised that, despite my enormous intelligence, I am not qualified to run a human life, so you'd better hand it over under those circumstances and that's what I did and Jesus has been running it ever since, thank God."

Gresham and his wife opened Rathvinden Ministries in an Irish manor house, where the couple offered a psychotherapy and counselling ministry dedicated to post-child abuse and post-abortion trauma.

Something of the counsellor remains with him, even though Gresham gave up the ministry. When I mention that Lewis's essay "The Problem of Pain" helped my teenage self square the notion of a loving God and a painful world philosophically, Gresham suggests I have suffered from a lot of pain. When I protest, he says: "I've been a counsellor for many years, I know pain when I see it." Although I sputter that it was a purely theoretical and early interest in theology, he is insistent.

Finally, we talk about his one-time career as a celebrity interviewer for Australian radio, which Gresham says has taught him every trick in the book. Now that he is on the other side of the microphone, his experience gives him an advantage over the interviewer. His favourite trick, he says, is when the interviewer remains silent. Normally the interviewee cracks and breaks the silence first, but because Gresham knows it, he tries to sustain the silence until the interviewer cracks first. For some reason, I can't help suspecting he has played this game with me.

When the interview is over, Gresham gives me a hug.