Paddy Moore was C.S. Lewis’s wartime officer friend whose death deeply affected him.
Lewis met Edward “Paddy” Moore while training for service in the First World War. The two became close friends and agreed that, if one died, the survivor would care for the other’s family. Moore was killed in action in 1918, and Lewis subsequently helped support Moore’s mother, Janie King Moore, and Moore’s daughter, Maureen.
This arrangement became a major part of Lewis’s adult domestic life. After the war, Lewis lived for many years with Mrs. Moore and his own father, although the precise nature of his relationship with Moore has been discussed by biographers. The friendship is also important for understanding how wartime experience shaped Lewis’s memories and later writing.
Paddy Moore is sometimes confused with Lewis’s literary colleagues. Owen Barfield and J.R.R. Tolkien were intellectual friends, not the officer whose wartime pact connected Lewis to the Moore family.