‘This idle prig’: the truth about CS Lewis and John Betjeman’s long-lasting feud

At Oxford, Lewis complained repeatedly in his diary about his student Betjaman’s attitude to work. A newly discovered letter throws light on their mutual antipathy

CS Lewis and John Betjeman had a famously strained relationship. While the Chronicles of Narnia author dismissed his then-student at Oxford as an “idle prig”, the future poet laureate went on to thank, in the preface of one of his collections, “Mr CS Lewis for the fact on page 256” – even though the book had only 45 pages.

But a previously unpublished letter from 1936 now reveals that they did attempt a truce, albeit short-lived.