Who is the professor in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

Digory Kirke is the professor in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Professor Kirke lives in the large country house where the Pevensie children stay during the Second World War. When Lucy claims that the wardrobe leads to another world, her siblings doubt her. Kirke responds by reasoning that Lucy is either telling the truth or has invented an unusually elaborate story, and he urges the others to investigate fairly.

Kirke is also a major character in The Magician’s Nephew, which reveals his childhood as Digory Kirke. In that earlier-set story, he witnesses the creation of Narnia and encounters Aslan at the beginning of the world. This makes him one of the few human characters who has direct knowledge of Narnia’s origins.

Readers sometimes identify the professor as Andrew Ketterley, but Andrew is Digory’s uncle in The Magician’s Nephew. The professor in the wartime house is Digory, now an older scholar and host to the Pevensie children.