Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I started on Lewis when I was six. I blame the BBC and my own naivety, because I fell in love with a large stuffed-toy lion who walked like a pantomime horse and flew on a blue-screen backdrop. The acting was terrible, but I didn't care.

Years later, I would watch a Blue Peter special on the BBC production. To my horror, I remember an actor's hand appearing from between Aslan's hind legs - but let's talk about the book.

Unlike his friend and fellow author Tolkien, Lewis is quite happy to talk about allegory. The Christian analogue to the death/rebirth of the lion is probably fairly obvious to most readers, although he gets more blatant in later volumes.

Despite the fact that this is the second in the chronicles, it was the first to be written. You can tell; it's fresher and less dogma-depressing than the ones written later (although they're still good).

The story tumbles along at a reasonable pace, although the peak-a-boo hide-and-seek - is it real or not - sequences in the house might be tiresome to a child.It has it's fair share of peril and nostalgia, which is no bad thing. Mostly, if you want to, you can ignore the religion and faith aspects and focus on the adventure. It works fairly well with or without devoutness.

Be warned: there are talking animals and it gets a bit sickly at points. Half the joy for me is that reading this enables me to slip back into an earlier mentality, one that was innocent enough not to be aghast at the sight of a fist emerging from where it shouldn't be. I can't be held responsible for what will happen to someone who picks it up for the first time at the age of forty.

All in all, I'd recommend it. Perhaps not as a beachside read or anything to delve into on an intellectual level, but definitely as a nostalgia trip or as a good volume to read to your kids. The rest of the chronicles are interconnected but also stand alone, so they aren't too much to swallow all at once.

I'm quite pleased that I have reached the end of the review without once using the word 'classic', but of course, in order to say that, I've just ruined it.