C.S. Lewis' only autobiographical work other than Surprised by Joy begins when he is 23, an undergraduate at Oxford and an atheist. It is the record of a double life: the brilliant student brilliantly working to achieve First Class degrees in Classics and English and the domesticated young man bicycling two miles away to share his life with a woman 26 years his senior. She was Mrs Moore, Irish-born, like Lewis, and the mother of his room-mate who was killed in the War. Her modest support from an estranged husband and the allowance Lewis received from his father - from whom Mrs Moore was concealed - was barely enough to keep them afloat as they moved from one house to another. Lewis gives an account of the household drudgery and conviviality he experienced in this odd menage, usually extended with visitors and boarders. In 1925, his fortunes improve when he is elected a Fellow of Magdalen College. The author became companion-secretary to C.S. Lewis in 1963, a post he filled for the remaining months of the Professor's life.