Digory's London entourage (Sarah, his cousin Edward, Mr. Kirke)

The characters

• Sarah  : Digory’s mother. She is the one who serves the family and whom we encounter in the kitchen and hallways. She bears witness to the domestic life of a bourgeois household around 1900.
• Uncle Andrew  : a relative of Andrew, an officer in a cavalry regiment. He is only mentioned.
• Mr. Kirke , Digory’s father : he is in India at the beginning of the book, leaving the boy alone with a sick mother and a family he does not care for. His return at the end coincides with Mabel’s recovery and the inheritance of a large country house, the one that will later appear in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Insight and analysis

Lewis anchors fantasy in a precise setting : rows of terraced houses, connecting attics, servants, and a family scattered by the British Empire. This realism makes the transition to the other world all the more startling.