Charles Williams: The Third Inkling - Tapa dura

In Charles Williams: The Third Inkling, Grevel Lindop has written a page-turner. He proves himself a master of the biographical narrative. He knows how to end chapters and sections of chapters with cliffhangers. He liberally employs the ironic slant, and he has an eye for visuals. Lindop's preface, a model of balanced prose, sets the volume's tone. (Philip Irving Mitchell, Religion and the Arts)

Charles Williams: The Third Inkling is a must-read for all those interested in this unique writer and thinker. (David Brazier, Temenos Academy Review (19))

Exemplary, and very thought-provoking (Philip Hensher, Books of the Year 2015, The Spectator)

This solid and scholarly biography explores the byways of literary history with much verve and energy ... Lindop has provided a fascinating account (Philip Hensher, Spectator)

Lindop has added significantly to our knowledge of the Third Man in the Inklings and deftly filled in some major blank areas in our standard map of literary modernism. (Kevin Jackson, Literary Review)

excellent biography (London Review of Books)

[a] fine, thoroughly researched book. (Tablet)

ground-breaking, and must play a central part in future Williams studies. (David Barratt, The Glass)

thorough biography (Journey)

fascinating reading ... meticulous study ... This biography puts Williams back in the picture (Andy Ffrench, Oxford Times)

This is the first full biography of Charles Williams (1886-1945), an extraordinary and controversial figure who was a central member of the Inklings―the group of Oxford writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Charles Williams―novelist, poet, theologian, magician and guru―was the strangest, most multi-talented, and most controversial member of the group.

He was a pioneering fantasy writer, who still has a cult following. C.S. Lewis thought his poems on King Arthur and the Holy Grail were among the best poetry of the twentieth century for 'the soaring and gorgeous novelty of their technique, and their profound wisdom'. But Williams was full of contradictions. An influential theologian, Williams was also deeply involved in the occult, experimenting extensively with magic, practising erotically-tinged rituals, and acquiring a following of devoted disciples.

Membership of the Inklings, whom he joined at the outbreak of the Second World War, was only the final phase in a remarkable career. From a poor background in working-class London, Charles Williams rose to become an influential publisher, a successful dramatist, and an innovative literary critic. His friends and admirers included T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and the young Philip Larkin.

A charismatic personality, he held left-wing political views, and believed that the Christian churches had dangerously undervalued sexuality. To redress the balance, he developed a 'Romantic Theology', aiming at an approach to God through sexual love. He became the most admired lecturer in wartime Oxford, influencing a generation of young writers before dying suddenly at the height of his powers.

This biography draws on a wealth of documents, letters and private papers, many never before opened to researchers, and on more than twenty interviews with people who knew Williams. It vividly recreates the bizarre and dramatic life of this strange, uneasy genius, of whom Eliot wrote, 'For him there was no frontier between the material and the spiritual world.'