Which award did C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle win in 1956?

C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle won the Carnegie Medal in 1956.

The Last Battle is the seventh and final published book in The Chronicles of Narnia. It received the Carnegie Medal, a major British children’s literature prize, in 1956. The medal is awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, formerly associated with the Library Association, for an outstanding children’s book by a British author.

The novel concludes the Narnia series with the destruction of the old Narnia and the entry of faithful characters into a deeper, renewed country. Its themes include deception, loyalty, judgment, and the relationship between the visible world and a greater reality. The book was published in 1956, shortly before Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman in a Christian ceremony in 1957.

The Carnegie Medal should not be confused with the Newbery Medal, which is an American award. The Hugo Awards are primarily associated with science fiction and fantasy, while the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize was a separate British literary honor.