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.'
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