What was the name of C.S. Lewis’s childhood tutor who strongly influenced his imagination?

William Kirkpatrick was the childhood tutor who strongly influenced C.S. Lewis’s imagination and education. Lewis studied with Kirkpatrick, whom he nicknamed “The Great Knock,” after leaving school in England for a period of intensive private tutoring.

Kirkpatrick was a former headmaster known for rigorous teaching. He trained Lewis in languages, literature, logic, and debate, and pushed him to examine assumptions carefully. Lewis later portrayed this demanding educational relationship in his autobiographical writing.

Kirkpatrick is sometimes confused with Lewis’s father, Albert Lewis, or with later friends such as Owen Barfield and J.R.R. Tolkien. Those men were important at different stages of Lewis’s life, but Kirkpatrick’s influence came during Lewis’s adolescence. The tutoring helped prepare Lewis for university entrance and strengthened the analytical habits visible in his later scholarship and apologetics.