Tolkien spent the rest of his professional life at Oxford. He lived an exceedingly ordinary existence, absorbed in the joys and frustrations of family life and engaged in the intellectual concerns of the academic profession. He rarely traveled, but entertained his young children with stories of fantasy lands often told in invented languages. He was fond of plain English clothes and plain English food, and he valued the beauty of the English countryside. At Oxford, he formed a very close friendship with writers C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams; they became known as the Inklings and, with other writers and Oxford faculty, spent much time together in the discussion of literary and religious issues. The Inklings and his own family were the first audience for Tolkien's tales and poems as well as his academic work. The friendship with C. S. Lewis was especially significant, and Tolkien was doubtless an influence in Lewis's conversion to Christianity and the composition of his series, The Chronicles of Narnia.
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