Which C.S. Lewis book adapts radio broadcasts first given during World War II?

Mere Christianity adapts C.S. Lewis’s radio broadcasts first given during World War II.

Lewis delivered the original talks for the BBC between 1941 and 1944. They were intended for a broad audience during wartime and explained core Christian ideas in accessible language. Lewis did not present them as a complete denominational system; instead, he aimed to discuss beliefs shared by many Christian traditions.

The talks were later revised and collected into three sections: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” “What Christians Believe,” and “Christian Behaviour.” The combined book was published in 1952 under the title Mere Christianity. The phrase refers to the common or central beliefs Lewis believed were shared across historic Christianity.

Readers sometimes mistake Mere Christianity for the title of the original broadcasts. The talks appeared separately in print before the unified volume, including Broadcast Talks and Christian Behaviour. Lewis’s conversational radio style helped make the book one of his best-known works.