C. S. Lewis

In later years, KR had a circle of friends at Cambridge which included C. S. Lewis , Edwin Muir and his wife Willa , Elizabeth Jennings , Owen Barfield , A. C. Harwood , Tom Henn

Despite her singularly unleisured lifestyle, RP had a remarkable talent for friendship, which extended to people with whom she might be expected to have little in common. Her friendship with Lord David Cecil brought her...

RP had a lifelong companion in Kathleen, or K, O'Hara , with whom she both worked and, from soon after the start of their business partnership, lived. It does not appear that this was an...

MB was shaped by her reading outside school. She never entered a bookshop until she was fourteen, but relied on libraries. Early favourites were C. S. Lewis 's Narnia books, Johanna Spyri 's Heidi books...

ZS went to Malorees Junior School and then to Hampstead Comprehensive . She was a shy, quiet girl and an overweight, anti-social adolescent, who used reading as an escape and refuge. She also loved...

Formative early reading included Richard Scarry and Kenneth Grahame 's The Wind in the Willows. Joanne Rowling did not care for Enid Blyton as a young child but acquired a taste for her later...

RP was baptised an Anglican as a baby by parents who had trained at Church of England colleges but were not churchgoers. Brought up between her father's scepticism and her mother's eclecticism in matters...

RP became a Christian and was confirmed as an Anglican during the second world war. She wrote, There were air raids at night. The factory was dark and dirty. And I remember thinking—well—I must find...