Kevin Jackson
The Third Man
Charles Williams: The Third Inkling
By Grevel Lindop
Oxford University Press 493pp £25
If Tolkien and C S Lewis were the Lennon and McCartney of the Inklings, then Charles Williams was the George Harrison. (And their Ringo? Possibly Owen Barfield. Another story.) Williams’s considerable, highly idiosyncratic achievements have long since been overshadowed by those of his two world-famous Oxford pals, and no doubt always will be, even in the unlikely event that some insane Hollywood executive decides to make a CGI blockbuster inspired by, say, Williams’s Arthurian verse epic Taliessin through Logres.
And yet the least well known of the Inklings was also the most wide-ranging and versatile. Williams made a distinguished mark in at least half a dozen different fields: as poet, popular novelist (with metaphysical thrillers such as War in Heaven and Many Dimensions), innovative verse dramatist, critic, scholar, theologian, historian and editor. In the daytime – he did most of his writing late at night, smoking furiously – he was a full-time publisher at Oxford University Press. On many evenings he was a lecturer, first in London and in his later years at Oxford University, where wartime students regarded him with awe.[1pass]
Nowadays, Williams’s forty-odd books are out of print save in shoddy, small-press editions and it is perfectly easy to glide through an undergraduate course in English literature without so much as noticing his name, let alone studying any of his work. Is this just another case of harsh literary Darwinism
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk