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Professor J.R.R. Tolkien was famously critical of his close friend C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Although he acknowledged their well deserved popularity, he never enjoyed them. When Lewis shared The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Tolkien in 1949, the professor’s response disappointed him. According to Lewis’s friend and biographer George Sayer, Tolkien disliked the mixture of mythologies; Father Christmas alongside Greek fauns, nymphs, talking animals and Aslan. He felt Lewis had been too careless in assembling his fictional world. Sayer recalled that Lewis was deeply discouraged, particularly as he had enthusiastically supported Tolkien’s works. Tolkien also disliked Narnia’s overt Christian allegory. In an unpublished letter of 24 December 1971, he said: “I am glad that you have discovered Narnia. These stories are deservedly very popular; but since you ask if I like them I am afraid the answer is No. I do not like ‘allegory’, and least of all religious allegory of this kind.” Despite their disagreements, Tolkien was clear that their different literary tastes had never interfered with their friendship. “But that is a difference of taste which we both recognized and did not interfere with our friendship.” - Same 1971 letter.