album cover of the week

Cream: Disraeli Gears

Designed by Martin Sharp who was also responsible for this classic poster of Jimi Hendrix...

Pauline Baynes's Narnia covers

I loved these books as a child. We (my older brother) had the whole set except "The voyage of the Dawn Treader" though rereading it in adulthood it seemed very familiar; the pool which turns things to gold and Eustace getting turned into a dragon in particular. I began lots of stories with finding the door or other mechanism to another world...

As a young child I didn't get the religious allegory which C. S. Lewis put in the stories (Aslan as Jesus, Eustace as Judas, etc) but understood it on an emotional level. Intellectually I (in common with Phillip Pullman) am repelled by the implication of these stories - that is that there is another "reality", a better world we can all get to if only we knew how - but they still retain their emotional appeal. As a child I hated the last book "The Last Battle" as Narnia is destroyed (the last judgement), I thought that meant that everything good and beautiful was over but rereading it as an adult it actually ends well (in Lewis's terms) as everyone is reunited in a kind of "heaven" which, guess what, looks a lot like Narnia.

Incidentally isn't Shadowlands a wonderful film, makes me cry without fail, but the message of it is quite different.

"Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal."

Pauline Baynes illustrated the first Puffin edition of the Narnia books. Which I think should be read in the order displayed here. The Magician's Nephew is a 'prequel' but it has a lot more meaning if you have already read The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe. It's the order they were written in too.

I love seeing these covers altogether like this, united by her style and the design elements, it's a great example of variations on a theme.

Everyone of a certain age remembers where they were when they heard that Kennedy had been assassinated, I was only 2 a the time so I don't, (it was John Lennon for me) but if you do, you also remember the day C.S. Lewis died too, November 22, 1963.