C. S. Lewis at the Bbc: Messages of Hope in the Darkness of War

The war years were to present the BBC with some of its toughest challenges to date - in the wake of air-raids, evacuation and the closure of the fledgling television service, the BBC had a potent motive to keep their audience informed, entertained and inspired.
In answer to the trials of war the Home Service was created, and despite the desperate conditions, it is still considered by many to have been the greatest era of radio broadcasting. A major function of this new service was to communicate the Christian message to a nation whose faith was on the rack of war, and it was to this end that the BBC first contacted C. S. Lewis.
As a layman, Lewis's critics initially claimed that he was not qualified to talk on Christian matters, but for Lewis, used to the scholarly debates of his beloved Oxford, this was all part of the challenge of reaching a new audience. And reach them he did - Lewis's incredibly popular BBC talks were published as Mere Christianity and to date have sold over 11 million copies worldwide.
This rich chapter in Lewis's life, dealing with his complex relationships with the personalities behind the BBC, as well as his love-hate affair with broadcasting itself, has traditionally received little attention from biographers and commentators - and yet it was C. S. Lewis's work on the radio that made him a household name.