As Hollywood gears up for a major new adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s classic Chronicles of Narnia, with Greta Gerwig’s version of The Magician’s Nephew due for release in early 2027, Dr Michael Ward explores reasons for the series’ enduring popularity. Lewis once explained that “the whole Narnian story is about Christ” and Dr Ward, drawing on his best-selling and award-winning book Planet Narnia, will unpack the ingenious way the septet conveys a Christian understanding of reality through Lewis’s lifelong love of the music of the spheres.

Michael Ward is an English literary critic and theologian. An associate faculty member in Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, he is the author of multiple books, most notably Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press) and After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic). He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, presented the BBC television documentary The Narnia Code, and co-authored Popcorn with the Pope: A Guide to the Vatican Film List. Formerly an Anglican priest, he joined the Catholic Church in 2012 and was ordained a priest within the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in 2018.