03 March 2016, The Tablet

The third man


 
Charles Williams: the third InklingGrevel Lindop(Oxford University Press, 544 PP, £25)Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • Tel 01420 592974 Among the less spectacular literary consequences of Hitler’s war was the wholesale move of the Oxford University Press’ London branch to Oxford. Its staff included Charles Williams, an editor in his mid fifties with an industrious literary bent and curious religious interests. Against the background of a university half-emptied by war service, he cut a disproportionately large figure. He was soon brought into the circle around C.S. Lewis, known to history as the Inklings. Most of these men were dons, or from a similar intellectual background. Williams was of a different cloth.He was the son of a highly literate lower-middle-cla
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