Items from the Wish List: Charles Williams

Charles Williams: The Third Inkling by Grevel Lindop  (Author)

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. – Amazon.

To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to His Wife Florence, 1939-1945 by Roma A King (Editor)

These letters to “Michal,” Williams endearing name for his wife, from “Serge,” a moniker by which his most intimate friends addressed him, are more than just a collection of love letters―they are significant for what they tell us about the man, for the light they throw on his work, and for the way they show Williams in the context of his literary contemporaries (C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Dorothy L. Sayers, Christopher Fry, and Edith Sitwell). In fact, Williams felt that T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis were the only two people other than his wife to whom he could talk seriously about important matters. – Amazon.

James I: A Biography of a King by Charles Williams (Author), Dorothy L. Sayers (Introduction)

“The following pages are concerned with James Stuart, and not the history of England except as it affected James Stuart” writes Williams in his preface. All relevant historical details are woven into this narrative account, however, like his novels, Williams pushes further into the very personality of James. Early chapters cover the alliances, plots, and threats of his Scotland years; latter chapters cover his reign in England, which commenced in 1603. Situated between the executions of his mother (Mary) and his son (Charles I), "the curious figure of James stands at the change of the centuries. The splendour of the Renascence homo is becoming the clarity of the seventeenth-century gentleman" "Shakespeare and Bacon were to be his servants; Harvey his physician, Donne his chaplain. He was to be the patron of the great English book that declared the coming of the Prince of Peace, and to see himself as a prince of peace, bringing rest to the afflicted churches and nations. But war in Europe and war in England were to open over his grave; the gossips were to spice their scandalous talk with his name; and afterwards everybody was always to laugh or shudder at him for ever." – Amazon.