My Memories of C.S. Lewis - John Lennox

It's a great pleasure for me to be invited to speak to this forum Socrates and the City because Socrates is one of my great intellectual heroes. Now I ought to preface my remarks by saying that I am a mathematician and the received definition of a mathematician is a person who talks in other people's sleep but a mathematician who is five hours jet-lagged is in serious danger of going to sleep in his own lecture which incidentally has happened on at least three occasions that I know of. Eric asked me to tell you a little bit about C.S. Lewis which is not part of this talk but my memories of him are very vivid and he used to lecture in the English lecture theatre in Mill Lane in Cambridge just virtually next door to the pub where the announcement of the decoding of the double helix was announced in 1953. It was just across the road from the mathematics institute so when the maths got boring I would sneak out and go and listen to Lewis. The room was about this size, it was absolutely packed, people sitting on the floor and there was just space for him to come through the double doors and wend his way up to the podium. It was winter, it was very cold and Lewis was a big heavy man who wore a big heavy coat and a big scarf and a hat so he came through the door and immediately started to lecture before he'd taken coat, hat or scarf off but he proceeded to lecture as he made his way up to the podium so by the time he got to the podium he probably had his scarf off and then he'd take his hat off and put it down and his coat off and by the time all that was done he was way into the lecture, word perfect. I can't remember him using notes. The interesting thing was when he finished the lecture he reversed this process so still lecturing he'd put on his hat of his scarf, put on his coat and the last words would be uttered as he disappeared out through the door. There was no opportunity for questions, those were dealt with in the private tutorials.