He is a member of the school aristocracy. If you have not been at such a school as Wyvern, you may ask what a Blood is. Beside them Pogo shrank into insignificance what is a Master compared with a Blood? The whole school was a great temple for the worship of these mortal gods and no boy ever went there more prepared to worship them than I. Above all, the Bloods, the adored athletes and prefects, were an embodiment of all worldly pomp, power, and glory. The crowd of boys older than oneself, their dazzling air of sophistication, scraps of their esoteric talk overheard, were like Park Lane in the old 'Season' to a girl who is to be a débutante next year. We were often taken there to see matches or sports or the finish of the great Goldbury Run. At Chartres we had lived under the shadow of the Coll. Going to the Coll was the most exciting thing that had yet happened in my outer life. Now that we have done with Chartres we may call Wyvern College simply Wyvern, or more simply still, as Wyvernians themselves call it, The Coll. Lewis was a perceptive observer of the ubiquitous Greek love practised there, without participating himself. The following extracts from it concern the sexual culture at Malvern College in Worcestershire, the boys’ boarding school he attended for the academic year 1913-4, aged fourteen to fifteen, and for which he uses the pseudonym “Wyvern”. He also wrote a memoir of his youth, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (London, 1955).

Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the StarsĬlive Stape Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, Christian apologist and Oxbridge professor most famous as the author of a series of children’s books, The Chronicles of Narnia.

Flannelled Fool: a slice of life in the Thirties.

Marlowe, Sharpe & Mark - Farewell to the Dutchman.

Geschenk, Louis - The Alexandre Yersin Case.

Drummond, Oliver - Ralph Nicholas Chubb: Prophet and Paiderast.

Davis, Graham - A Boy Scout Whistles And Smiles.

Eyes lit with the light of other skies: The joyful life of Edwin Emmanuel Bradford

Surprised by joy by cs lewis