Nick Haddad currently serves as the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s Assistant to the Warden for The C.S. Lewis Study Centre at The Kilns. Before moving to Oxford, Nick served the Foundation as an intern in our Redlands office, as well as received his B.A. at Belmont University in Mass Communications. As a part of his time spent at The Kilns, Nick has agreed to write a series of blog posts regarding his experiences in order to give our readers an idea of what it is like to work and live in the former home of C.S. Lewis.

I arrived at The Kilns two Sundays ago on the 6^th of October.  I had been to The Kilns before two years before in the summer of 2011 when I did a study abroad program through my college, Belmont University. This time, even though I vaguely remembered what the home was like, it felt like coming into a whole new world.  All the feelings of being overwhelmed with the magnitude of the history of the home came rushing back (I’m living in Douglas Gresham’s room for crying out loud, but I digress).

Many visitors of Lewis’ former home have come to the conclusion that The Kilns feels astounding, and I agree completely.  The ghosts of greats are around every corner. I am not even close to coming to a point where I’m content with the fact that I am sleeping only a few yards away from where Lewis and Tolkien would sit and talk about going into wardrobes and little people with hairy feet taking a ring to a volcano.

It was not long before I was thrown into the world of Lewis, being taught the standards for giving tours of The Kilns, as well as some great Lewis facts that one can really only hear about while living here.

My first legitimate tour was this last Tuesday.  I studied the history of the home and of Lewis himself, and was confident in my knowledge of what happened in the rooms and was ready to give these visitors a tour to remember.  I waited for the last guests when I heard some approaching footsteps outside.  I walked out to greet them and came face to face with an elderly man with a cane walking in front of another group.  I didn’t recognize this man so I went to shake his hand and greet the group.  “Hello, my name is Nick,” I say as politely as possible.  “Hello there, I’m Walter.”  A pleasant name, I think to myself.  An approaching man chimes in and tells me it’s really Walter Hooper.

Now if you’re reading this and are not aware of the intensity of this moment, take five seconds and go grab your closest book by Lewis, preferably a nonfiction work, and open it up and read the introduction.  Go ahead, I’ll give you a second and wait…. Does the name in there sound familiar? To give you a brief description, Walter Hooper was a personal friend and secretary to Jack in the last summer of his life, and wrote introductions to many of Lewis’ works as well as published his own works on Lewis to continue the literary relevance of Lewis’ works for the past 50 years!

So you can understand my utter shock and surprise to be meeting this giant in Lewis’ life!  I could feel my stomach sink to my feet, but I greeted him as calmly as I could and lead him into the home.  Debbie Higgens, the current Warden at the Kilns, came in to the surprise of seeing Walter and greeted him as an old friend.  She pulled me aside and told me he had never stopped by randomly like this and offered to give the tour for me if I wanted her to.  I thought it over for a good ten seconds before deciding that I was going to do this: I was going to give a tour to a man that was personal friends with Lewis and knew more about the home I was about to tell him about than I could ever imagine knowing.

Well as you can guess since I am writing this blog, I did not die of utter nerves and fear after giving the tour.  Walter chimed in only once or twice with a correction (or rather a more specific detail) and was happy to tell many of his own stories that I had not heard to the delight of both myself and the fellow people on the tour.  He even said I did a very good job and wished me luck for future tours.  I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and laid down in my bed decompressing for a while after that.

I figured that would be the end of the day, but I was invited to attend the first meeting of the C.S. Lewis Society here in Oxford, and who should be speaking but Alister McGrath? The man who recently published a very well-received biography of Lewis and is quite possibly one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to.  Of course, let’s just top off the day by getting to meet him after the meeting. I think I have met my Lewis connections quota for the next few weeks.

Life at the Kilns has been amazing thus far, and I look forward to painting a greater picture to what it is like to live in the home of Lewis.  I do not expect to get used to living here any time soon, which I am very okay with. I hope you’ll join me in this process as I take this exciting journey that is life in Oxford and living at the Kilns.  Until next time, this is Nick Haddad, signing off.