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C.S. Lewis Was a Secret GovernmentAgentA recent discovery unveils an unknown chapter in the life the famous Oxford Don.Harry Lee Poe / DECEMBER 10, 2015
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AImage: Lewis photo used by permission of The Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL.
s I browsed eBay not long ago, I came across a 78 rpm recording of a
lecture by C. S. Lewis. I assumed that it was a mistake or that the
seller was trying to defraud an unwitting public. I knew Lewis well
enough to know that he had never made a 78 rpm recording for general
distribution, much less one produced by something called the Joint
Broadcasting Committee. I also knew that Lewis never delivered a lecture on the
subject “The Norse Spirit in English Literature.” At least, I knew we had no
evidence of such a lecture. Fortunately, curiosity got the better of me, and I
bought the record from the dealer in Iceland.
Over the years, I have assembled a significant collection of items related to C. S.
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Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and their literary friends. I regularly mount exhibitions
for universities and major municipal libraries to spur interest in the Inklings,
especially when the secular market is all abuzz when a new Lewis or Tolkien
movie is released. At one time, collecting letters, manuscripts, first editions, and
other artifacts and ephemera was a slow process that depended upon visiting
faraway places with strange sounding names. But all of that changed with e-
commerce, which led to this unusual recording being in my possession.
And what an unusual find it turned out to be. I discovered some things about a
secret episode in Lewis’s life that few, if any, people knew about.
In His Majesty’s Secret ServiceHow Lewis came to be recruited and by whom remains a secret. The records of
the Secret Intelligence Service, known popularly as MI6, remain closed.
Perhaps one of his former pupils at Oxford recommended him for his mission.
It was an unusual mission for which few people were suited. J. R. R. Tolkien had
the knowledge base for the job, even beyond that of Lewis, but Tolkien lacked
other skills that Lewis possessed. Perhaps someone had heard Lewis lecture on
his favorite subject in one of the two great lecture halls in the Examination
Schools building of Oxford University. At a time when Oxford fellows were
notorious for the poor quality of their public lectures, Lewis packed the hall
with an audience of students who were not required to attend lectures. In the
1930s, Lewis was the best show in town. Somehow Lewis had developed the skill
to speak to an audience and hold them in rapt attention, in spite of his academic
training rather than because of it.
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The first thing I discovered was that the Joint Broadcasting Committee was an
arm of British secret intelligence that served a propaganda purpose by
broadcasting to people in occupied enemy territory during World War II. Until
now, the general public and the world of scholarship had no idea that C. S. Lewis
began his wartime service by undertaking a mission for MI6. Long before James
Bond, Lewis rendered service to this clandestine branch of British Intelligence,
which was so secret for so long that few people knew of its existence, and few of
those knew its actual name. Alternatively known as Military Intelligence, the
Secret Service, and MI6, its actual name may be the Secret Intelligence Service.
Ian Fleming gave the head of this spy network the code name of M, but in real
life he is simply known as the Chief. When Lewis came on board at the
beginning of World War II, it was still a fledgling group of amateurs
desperately working to save their island home from disaster.
TAGS: C.S. Lewis / World War II
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