Hywel David Lewis was born in Llandudno, Wales, in 1910 and passed away in 1992. His education occurred at the University College of North Wales, where he graduated with a first-class degree in philosophy in 1932, and continued on at Jesus College, Oxford, to receive a BLitt in 1935. He was professor of philosophy at the University College of North Wales from 1947 to 1955 and thereafter professor of the history and philosophy of religion in the University of London, King’s College, from 1955 to 1977.

For thirty years in the formal sense, Lewis ‘professed’ his subject and of course was a philosopher long before and long after that period—teaching, writing and thinking for well over fifty years. He held the presidency position in the Mind Association, the Aristotelian Society and the Society for the Study of Theology. In addition, he served as the chairman of the Council for the Royal Institute of Philosophy from 1965 to 1988. Not only was he a regular presenter at the Gifford Lectures in his prime, he also participated in the Wilde, Cadbury and Owens Evans lectures. His works included Morals and the New Theology (1947), Morals and Revelation (1951), Our Experience of God (1959), The Elusive Mind (1969), The Self and Immortality (1973), Persons and Life after Death (1978) and The Elusive Self (1982). He also published in Welsh. His interest in comparative religion led to his becoming founding editor of the journal Religious Studies, holding the post from 1964 to 1979. He edited the Muirhead Library of Philosophy from 1947 to 1978.