That looks very interesting, thanks, @narnian78! I had heard a couple of the surviving recordings of Lewis himself, but when I've got some time, I would like to listen to these. Has Philip Bird recorded all of them? He doesn't have as nice and resonant a voice as Lewis, but he does read it very well — and it's good to have the reminder that these talks were originally broadcast during a time when questions of life and death and ultimate meaning (if there is any) were very, very very much in mind for everyone in Britain and in many other countries as well.

Posted by: @narnian78

Unfortunately, almost all of the radio broadcasts were lost because of the war effort

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing it was more likely due to the BBC's infamous propensity for wiping and reusing tapes, or else destroying them to free up storage space, which is why so many early episodes of Doctor Who and some other classic shows are missing as well...   (Another BBC radio series from the early 1940s, which I would love to hear and which also hasn't survived, is Dorothy L. Sayers' dramatisation of the Gospel story, The Man Born to Be King — going by the scripts, which are still available in book form, that would have been quite amazing.)

@courtenay 

it looks like Philip Bird recorded many of the broadcasts. I am not sure, but I think he has done all of the chapters of the book Mere Christianity.  It may be all of the scripts that were used for broadcast. I think it was a great idea since the recordings are very listenable and easy to understand for the average listener. 

I suppose these have been given little line drawings to entertain the modern listener who doesn't have the capacity to just listen to a disembodied voice speaking for an extended time.  They also give the time/social background. 

I'd like to know more about the recordings, who the speakers are, where they are from, and of course whether they are authorised by the Estate who still have the copyrights on Lewis's work.

@coracle 

There are also recordings of Lewis’ essays which do not have the line drawings but just a portrait of Lewis and Aslan. They have a different narrator who reads the essays.  I didn’t see the narrator’s name on the video, which seems a little strange.  I don’t know for certain if they received permission from the Lewis estate for these videos either. But it’s all probably legal since they have been on YouTube for a long time and there are a lot of them. It doesn’t seem likely that all of the videos would be posted and then removed from YouTube for legal reasons.

@coracle 

I wonder if something else could have been used on the videos other than the line drawings. Using still photographs with audio might be kind of of boring so I guess the creators of the videos thought the “doodling” would hold people’s interest more. There has to be something lively to watch, or at least that is what the people think who posted the videos. The drawings might be a distraction for some, although they do stimulate some interest for others.  I kind of liked them. 🙂

@narnian78 these had been referred to Estate about two years ago. I don't know how they responded.  I'm surprised that this copyright material is still up on someone else's site.