All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922-1927

A book with such a dry-sounding title will necessarily cause the prospective reader, even the fans of CSL, to wonder whether it is worth its price and the effort of reading it. To answer that question, I would say that the book is of real value to both the diehard Lewisophile, and the researcher of well-known characters from that period of Oxford such as John Betjeman.The period covered is from the time of his study for the second of his three degree subjects, to the second year of his English Fellowship at Magdalen. On eventually being offered a position, he was asked would he mind teaching some philosophy as well as English. In a letter to his father, he records that by that time he would have `agreed to coach a troupe of performing bagbirds in the quadrangle'.His main motive for keeping the diary was that the entries were read aloud to his companion Mrs Moore, who kept house for him. If he allowed the diary to lapse, she would prompt him to start again. This is all to the good in terms of a candid insight into his life, as publication would be the last thing he would have expected. The published text is well edited, and generally gets the flavour of his domestic and college life. The general range and depth of his intellectual life is captured particularly well, with Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, and a variety of philosophical savants (now mostly forgotten) being the daily diet.There are some surprises in the text. I was surprised at the extremely social nature of his life at this time. Far from a life of solitary study, the steady stream of houseguests, companionable walks, and visits to the theatre or musical performances form a large part of the normal routine. Without doubt the most horrifying section is his account of their attempt to help `The Doc', who goes mad shortly before his death. This reminded me of the later Lewis who was to write `A Grief Observed' - an account of his wife dying, and his coming to terms with it - a rare blend of compassion and self-analysis. At the end of the book is a fascinating but rather uncompromising set of nine pen-portraits of his Magdalen colleagues. These are private notes, and not intended for publication, but we see how the lancet accuracy of his analysis is turned with equal facility on human nature or literary works. It explains why he could be unintentionally intimidating, and why he was not equally appreciated by all his colleagues.

The UK paperback edition has a shiny, lurid and embarrassing cover. Harper/Collins was clearly trying to flog this book to the religious crowd, presumably on the grounds that the author of this diary wrote, years later and among other things, religious works: a tenuous connection, one would think. Ignore the cover.I'm not really a connoisseur of private diaries, so my words should not be taken too seriously: but I did enjoy this. It's for admirers of C.S. Lewis and graduate students. It filled me with a desire to go through the diary page by page, and read, or at least nibble on, every book Lewis mentions as having read. (If you seriously plan to do this, good luck: I recommend that you start by living next to a rich library at least a hundred years old.)But let the buyer beware of two things ... Firstly: this is not really a private diary, since it was written to be read to a Mrs Moore, who is one of the most prominent characters in it. If you want some sort of insight into the relationship between Lewis and Moore, give up on the idea, for there is none to be had, here or anywhere else. Secondly: the diary has been edited by Walter Hooper. He claims that he only removed the dull and repetitive bits. Yes, well.I suppose you should also be warned that the diary gives the impression that 1920s England was populated almost entirely by intelligent nitwits who blathered unintelligbly about metaphysics. Maybe this is true. It also gives the impression that everyone in 1920s England was languishing under the tyranny of idealism, which is false: G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, and soon almost everyone, would have none of it. But one cannot understand why Lewis came to believe what he did until one realises how strong this tyranny once was.