100 things you never knew about Charles Williams in 100 days (90-81)

Number of days to the launch of 
'Charles Williams: The Third Inkling"
Researched and written by Grevel Lindop
You can pre-order (£25).  Click on the title above.

Day 90
Charles Williams wrote a series of love poems on themes from Euclidian geometry, including triangles and asymptotes!

Day 89

CW said his boss Humphrey Milford consoled him for literary failure by 'offering me a reputation in the 21st century!'

Day 88

During World War 2 Graham Greene at the Ministry of Information commissioned CW to write a pamphlet on to help the war effort.

Day 87

Charles Williams disliked Oxford, and thought it 'though nice, still a kind of of London!' 

Day 86

   Christopher Lee knew Charles Williams and came to his lectures; 60+ yrs later he would play Saruman in Lord of the Rings movies.

Day 85


  CW gave CS Lewis's the title [The Allegory of Love] - CSL wanted to call it TheHouseOfBusiraneAnEssayOnTheEroticAllegoryOfTheMiddleAges !

Day 84


In the 1930s Charles Williams was a close friend of the novelist and opium-addict Mary Butts, author of Ashe of Rings & Armed With Madness.

Day 83

CWs was part of a series called I Believe: Mary Butts was to write a companion but never did.

Day 82


In 1939, Charles Williams said that T.S. Eliot was 'the only male love of my life since [D.H.S.] Nicholson died.'

Day 81

In autumn 1939 Charles Williams used to bring colleague Gerry Hopkins to Inklings meetings. Hopkins has never been listed as a minor Inkling.

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100 things you never knew about Charles Williams in 100 days (100-91)

Number of days to the launch of 
'Charles Williams: The Third Inkling"
Researched and written by Grevel Lindop.
You can pre-order (£25).  Click on the title above.

Day 100
In 1942 Charles Williams was called in by Oxford University Press to exorcise a haunted building (now the OUP shop) in Oxford High Street.

Day 99
Charles Williams attended the same school as the only English pope, Nicholas Breakspear, Pope Adrian IV.

Day 98
Charles Williams's favourite novel was Hadrian the Seventh, by Frederick Rolfe ('Baron Corvo').

Day 97
CW's grandfather was a militant atheist & republican who named one of his sons Cromwell!

Day 96
Charles Williams won a bronze medal in the 1924 Paris Olympics - for poetry.

Day 95
CW's Rosicrucian motto Qui Sitit Veniat 'Let him who is athirst come' is from the Bible's very last verse apart from St John's colophon.

Day 94
Charles Williams wrote his first novel after reading a thriller by Sax Rohmer, creator of Fu Manchu, and thinking 'I could do that!'

Day 93
CW walked to St Albans school daily over the spot where Protestant martyr George Tankerfield was burnt at the stake in 1555.

Day 92
In 1935 Charles Williams persuaded a cleaning-lady at OUP's Amen House to memorise long passages from Paradise Lost, Book XII.

Day 91
WH Auden wanted to buy CW's book but said it 'will require courage as I don't know how to pronounce it!'

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Grevel Lindop's new biography of Charles Williams

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.'

All Hallows Eve

The hate seemed to swell in a nightmare bubble within the rose which was forming round them, cloud in cloud, overlying like petals. Simon made a quick half-spring as if to overleap it, and so did they; but he failed and fell back, and so did they. The smell of the rose was changing to the smell of his last act, to the smell of blood. He looked down; he saw below him the depth of the rose.

A sudden fresh blast of rain fell on him and drove him deeper, and so those others. It flashed past him in an infinity of drops, as of points falling-at first crystal, then of all colours, from those almost too dark to be seen through to those almost too bright to be seen. They fell continuously between him and those other faces, in which he could now see those waves passing which his devotee had seen in his own face. The bright showers of the hallows flashed, and beyond him he could see only his multiplied self; and all he could do against them was only done to himself. 

Charles Williams - All Hallows Eve