Digory Kirke

As presented in Lewis's narrative chronology, Digory Kirke is an Englishman born in 1888 whose childhood adventures (notably in 1900) bring him into other worlds via magic rings manufactured by his Uncle Andrew and the Wood between the Worlds. In The Magician's Nephew he is directly involved in awakening Jadis in Charn and, under Aslan's direction, retrieves an apple from a locked garden that secures Narnia and later yields wood for the wardrobe portal. Lewis's notes place a fatal railway crash in 1949 that kills Digory and others prior to their entrance into the renewed Narnia/Aslan's Country, an event reported as part of the fictional narrative.

Lewis's texts do not supply detailed physical measurements or exhaustive physical description. The character appears in two principal life stages in the sources: as a boy who undertakes the transworld adventures in The Magician's Nephew, and as an elderly country-house resident referred to as 'the Professor' in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Film adaptations depict him at various ages, but those portrayals are adaptations rather than textual descriptions from Lewis's original works.

Digory is an ordinary human without inherent supernatural powers; his transworld travel is enabled by Uncle Andrew's magic rings and by travel through the Wood between the Worlds. He is granted permission by Aslan to retrieve an apple with curative/immortality properties and exercises moral agency in resisting temptation and obeying Aslan's instructions. His significance is narrative and moral rather than supernatural: his choices causally affect the history of Narnia (bringing Jadis into London; planting the apple core that later provides the wardrobe's wood).