Jonny McCambridge: My Narnian adventure through the wardrobe and out of the Shadowlands

He duly started off relating the adventures of the Pevensie children - Peter Susan, Edmund and Lucy; of Lucy’s discovery of a secret world through the back of the imposing piece of furniture where it was always winter but never Christmas and how she befriended a faun called Mr Tumnus. The fantastical world was Narnia.

At the time I could not have related much more about the plot of the book because we never finished it. Our teacher’s initial enthusiasm quickly wore off to be replaced by his more usual world-weary manner and annoying habit of pretending he could not hear me when I asked a question.

However, I, and some of my classmates, had become enchanted by the canon of work by the author CS Lewis. In a time before Google we established that there were seven Narnia books, and, in a time before Amazon, several of us were in a race to be the first to complete the set.

Some were available from the local newsagent in Ballycastle. A couple were obtained through swapping with friends. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was discovered in the impossibly exotic location of the Tower Centre in Ballymena (the trip to get it seemed almost as much of an adventure and distant quest as the journey of the ship in the story).

But, The Horse and his Boy remained elusive. No matter where I travelled, a copy could not be found. In some senses this was apt as the novel was an outlier, not following the narrative timeline of the other six books and leading to some confusion as to where it should be placed in chronological sequence.

Eventually, after many months of searching, a copy was discovered at a church jumble sale. I proudly brought the complete set of Narnia books into school the following day to parade my triumph over my friends.

I was so proud I even told the teacher that I had collected all seven of the books he had introduced us to. He pretended not to hear.

Of course, owning the books was a very different thing from reading them. I was a keen reader as a child, but much of my talents and energies in this area went in the direction of Marvel and DC superhero comics.

I did finish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, complete with talking beavers, Aslan’s dramatic debut and a cameo appearance from Father Christmas.

I then read The Magician’s Nephew, which, while written later, served as a prequel and an origin story. It contains a flying horse and a boy called Digory. It was then, and remains, my favourite of the Narnia books.

However, my enthusiasm began to sap when I moved on to Prince Caspian, which I failed to finish (preferring instead to return to the adventures of The Fantastic Four or Iron Man).

I do recollect making a couple of abortive attempts to read The Last Battle as I was keen to know how it all finished up. However, the task of completing that novel was too steep for me at that young age and it was abandoned. Surprisingly, I resisted the temptation to simply skip to the last few pages to read the conclusion.

And that remained the situation as I went on my own adventure from being a boy to a man. Eventually I learnt more about the author, that he was originally from Belfast and that the mountains and forest of Narnia were inspired by his love of the dramatic landscapes of the Mournes.

Without returning to the books, I walked the Narnia Trail in Co Down several times and admired the artworks in Belfast’s CS Lewis Square.

Shadowlands, with Anthony Hopkins as Lewis, remains one of my favourite films. When three of the Narnia series were turned into big budget movies, Ballymena’s Liam Neeson provided the voice of Aslan.

At the start of this year I was in a bookshop with my son. At his request, we had gone to look at their collection of Japanese Manga graphic novels. While meandering through the aisles I absent-mindedly picked up a heavy book with a lion’s face on the cover. It was The Chronicles of Narnia and featured all seven novels in one volume. My son had never shown any previous interest in the stories, so I was surprised when he asked if we could buy it.

Every evening, before bedtime, my wife or I set aside time to read to our boy. That night, he was impatient to begin The Magician’s Nephew. So, I started to read him the magical tale of Polly, Digory, his malevolent uncle and the witch Jadis, the first of the Narnia stories.

I suppose I didn’t necessarily imagine that he would have the patience or stamina to stick with a book containing seven novels in excess of 800 pages (and small type which sorely tested my failing eyes). I imagined, like myself many years before, his attention would wander and instead seek out shallower and more easily accessible pleasures.

However, night after night, it was Narnia my son asked for. It even made the ordeal of trying to persuade him to go to bed slightly easier.

This week we completed The Last Battle, the final tale in the series. The book is now dog-eared, slightly battered. More than four decades after my own Narnian adventure started, I have finally made it through the wardrobe and out of the Shadowlands.