ABSTRACT
Lewis had no serious relations with women until after the Great War. Lewis’ fiction provides some insight into his self-protective attitude toward women and his deep-rooted hostility to children. Iris Barry, whose real name was Crump, was born in Birmingham in 1895 and came from a provincial, dreary and impoverished background. The lives of Lewis and Iris were curiously parallel. Both had obscure origins and disguised their background. Iris lived with Lewis, the only man who never bored her, from about 1918 until 1921, while ordering machine-guns for the Ministry of Munitions and working as a librarian in the School of Oriental Studies. Iris was a brave and independent woman who started her distinguished and colorful career as soon as she left Lewis. Iris met Pierre Kerroux at the 1947 Cannes film festival when a journalist friend broke his leg and gave Kerroux a press card to see the films Iris was judging.
