Across Lewis Close (No Coaches, reads the road sign) lies the CS Lewis Nature Reserve the original Shadowlands, perhaps, for even when the sun is at its zenith, the cool shadows stretch across the small lake to offer their embrace. The sign of welcome states: 'Take only photographs. Leave only footprints. Kill only time'.

It is a place of startingly original beauty a small paradise in suburbia.

In the introduction to The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, released by CollinsChildren'sBooks as a tribute to CS Lewis, his stepson, Douglas Gresham, describes the nature reserve behind the house as a place of great beauty.

He wrote: "There was a small lake in the wood, teeming with fish and old half-ruined buildings and mysterious old sheds covered in ivy and other creeping plants.

"There was an atmosphere of mystery and a pervading feeling of oddness about the place. "I was ten when I went there to live and I was almost in Narnia..."

It has the same mix of beauty and mystery that makes you want to explore but do so with friends. It was a favourite place for the author, who would use his walks to think, or take the young Douglas to the jetty or use his boat on the water.

Today the reserve is quiet and peaceful. There's no sign of the boat, believe to belong to CS Lewis, which lay half submerged in the water for so many years, just calm water.

Perhaps it is true that the nature reserve, where the only thing you are asked to leave behind is footprints, really was the inspiration for Narnia.

C.S. Lewis tutored at Magdalen College for nearly 30 years. His rooms at the college are easily spotted three tubs of geraniums grow on the windowsills of New Building, where he would have his meals and his hot water brought to him on the first floor.

From his window, he could look across at Addison's Walk, a mile-long riverside, circular path and a splendidly scenic place to pursue the literary muse.

In fact he spent 30 years writing and rewriting a poem about Addison's Walk and, in 1998, it was reproduced on a circular plaque to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. When CS Lewis wasn't writing his Chronicles of Narnia, he gave tutorials at the college. Peter Sykes, a former editor of our sister paper The Oxford Times, sat at the great man's feet for half of one term.

Sykes read English at Merton, but was part of a sort of student-exchange deal with Lewis's fellow don, Hugo Dyson.

"They used to swap pupils every term," recalls Sykes. "So I went to him but because he was a bit of a hypochondriac, he was always 'Sporting his Oak' or closing the outer door to his set of rooms to signify that he was not to be disturbed.

"So in an eight-week term, I had four tutorials. He wasn't anything like they portrayed him in the film he was more like a gentleman farmer, ruddy of cheek and jowl.

"To be honest, I wasn't impressed. Although he had some style when they told him he had three months to live, he is said to have replied, 'Good, I've got enough time to re-read my favourite books' he would push and bully you, but he liked you to be able to give it back." The walk was not the only favourite place to talk and discuss matters with his peers. "He had a way of talking to people," a colleague remembers. And every Tuesday morning in St Giles, Lewis would talk to the likes of Charles Williams and JRR Tolkein, over convivial glasses of cheer in the Eagle and Child pub.

Today, pictures of them hang in the snug confines of the bar where they used to meet.

Andy, the barman, tells an amusing tale of how just last week, some Americans turned up and asked him, in all seriousness: "Does CS Lewis still drink in here?".

But perhaps that's not so ridiculous. The man who wrote The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was indeed a literary lion himself, as well as being something of an Oxford legend.

And legends, as we know, never really die.