SURPRISED BY JOY

The story of an intellectual questing reveals the opening doors, the tools of thought and the widening vision that led to the author's accepting Christianity. His pictures of his life in Ireland and England, after the death of his mother, mirror the developing closeness to his brother and their widening separation from their demanding, mercurial, insensitive father. His descriptions of his life in various schools ranks the types of teaching and customs prevalent for their effect upon him, as fagging, pederasty, punishments and priggishness occurred. There is the growth of atheism, the shadows of depression; there are the many able and important mentors, at school and among his tutors; there is World War I and further knowledge of the lives and thoughts of others; and there is God closing in as he rejects Theism for Christianity, "a dejected and reluctant convert" at the time but now an assured and professing believer. A well- mannered journey of interest to the followers of his religious titles, the readers of his Screwtape Letters, while those who have followed his children's books will find the impetus for those stories here.