Professor Kirke first appears in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Professor Kirke is the elderly academic who owns the country house where the Pevensie children stay during wartime evacuation. He listens carefully when Lucy claims that a wardrobe leads to another world, and his reasoning helps persuade Edmund, Peter, and Susan that her story deserves belief.
Kirke is later revealed to be Digory Kirke, the boy protagonist of The Magician’s Nephew. That prequel, published later, shows his connection to the creation of Narnia and explains the wardrobe’s significance.
Readers sometimes confuse Professor Kirke with Lewis himself, since both are Oxford-connected scholars and both defend imagination. Kirke is a fictional character, while Lewis remained outside the story as its author.