Welcome to Planet Narnia!

Michael Ward Headshot This website gives you information and news about my book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008).

See what the critics are saying about it.

It was the subject of a TV documentary called The Narnia Code broadcast on BBC1, Easter 2009, and repeated on BBC4 a few weeks later (view the trailer on YouTube). If you'd like to be notified when it becomes available on DVD, complete with bonus features that weren't included in the broadcast, visit narniacode.com. See what the TV reviewers are saying about it.

Planet Narnia and The Narnia Code argue that Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles of Narnia out of the imagery associated with the seven heavens of the medieval cosmos.

But is it really possible that Lewis could have invented and kept such a secret? Why would he have been so interested in medieval cosmology? What are the seven heavens? How come nobody has noticed this secret before? Does this hidden theme matter? How does it relate to Lewis's Christian beliefs?

Here you will find answers to these and many other frequently asked questions. I hope they will inspire you to read the Narnia Chronicles and Planet Narnia itself, if you haven't already done so.

Do let me know what you think of the book by posting your own review on the page of readers' comments.

If you have any questions about either Planet Narnia or The Narnia Code, please be in contact. (A recent reprint of Planet Narnia failed to include the illustrations. If you have bought one of these faulty copies and would like a replacement, please write to phil.henderson@oup.com)

Listen to a podcast interview with me about Lewis, Narnia and the seven heavens. If you would like to attend a course that I am teaching this summer (July 2009) at Regent College, Vancouver, on Lewis's theological imagination, click here for details. Or become a friend on Facebook.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Ward

'It's fun laying out all my books as a cathedral. Personally I'd make Miracles and the other "treatises" the cathedral school: my children's stories are the real side-chapels, each with its own little altar.'

C.S. Lewis

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"Noting Ward's claim that he has discovered 'the secret imaginative key' to the Narnia books, the sensible reader responds by erecting a castle of skepticism. My own castle was gradually but utterly demolished as I read this thoughtful, scholarly, and vividly-written book."

Alan Jacobs (Professor of English, Wheaton College, and author of "The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis")