C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity talks were first presented as BBC radio broadcasts.
During the Second World War, Lewis delivered a series of short radio talks intended to explain and defend basic Christian beliefs in language accessible to a broad audience. The talks were broadcast by the BBC between 1941 and 1944.
Lewis’s radio work became the foundation for Mere Christianity, the book assembled from revised versions of those broadcasts. The title refers to the shared core of Christian belief rather than to one denomination. Lewis later organized the material into sections on human morality, Christian belief, and Christian behavior.
The broadcasts made Lewis widely known beyond Oxford’s academic world. His calm, conversational style helped the programs reach listeners living through wartime uncertainty. Some descriptions call them “BBC talks,” while others mention individual broadcast series such as “Right and Wrong.” The platform itself was BBC radio.