A few years ago, because of my interest in C.S. Lewis, I was asked to chair an event at the Belfast Book Festival about Inkling Charles Williams, of whom I had limited knowledge. The speaker at the event was Grevel Lindop, who had just written a biography of Williams (Charles Williams – the Third Inkling), which I obviously read before the Festival and became intrigued by this unusual character.
When people think of the Inklings, the minds of most people jump instantly to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Yet among this informal group of Oxford writers and thinkers was the lesser-known, but no less fascinating, Charles Williams, who was a poet, novelist, theologian, and editor.
Williams brought a distinct voice to the Inklings—one steeped in mysticism, romantic theology, and a deep concern for the intersection of spiritual and earthly realities. Though he never gained the household-name status of his more famous peers, Williams remains an enigmatic and compelling figure whose works continue to intrigue readers who wander beyond the well-trodden paths of Narnia and Middle-earth.
A Life Lived in Paradox
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was born in London in 1886. His upbringing was modest but intellectually rich, and from a young age, he showed an affinity for literature, theology, and the relationship between the two. He never attended university – something that set him apart from his Oxford-based Inklings friends, although it didn’t stop them inviting him to lecture there. He took a job at the Oxford University Press based in London, where he remained for most of his life.
Williams had a striking presence. Though not traditionally physically attractive, he was intense and magnetic, often described as both charming and unsettling. He was a deeply spiritual man with a lifelong fascination with the mystical and the occult, though he mainly channeled his interests through fiction.
It was during his time at the Oxford University Press that Williams began to publish his own works—starting with poetry and eventually moving into fiction and theological treatises. His career took a dramatic turn during World War II, when the Press relocated to Oxford to try and avoid the blitz. It was there, beside the hallowed halls of academia, that Williams became an active participant in the Inklings.
The Unlikely Inkling
The Inklings were not an official club. Rather, they were a group of creative friends – male and Christian – who gathered regularly to read and critique each other’s work. Meetings mainly took place at pubs like The Eagle and Child (affectionately known as “The Bird and Baby”) or in C.S. Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College.
Williams was an unlikely addition to this group. He wasn’t an Oxford academic and had little interest in the medievalism that enchanted Lewis and Tolkien. But Lewis, ever open to intellectual challenge, was immediately captivated by Williams’s ideas and personality. They met because, unknown to each other, each sent a letter to the other in admiration of books they had just published. They soon formed a close, if complex, friendship. Lewis once described reading Williams’s novel The Place of the Lion as a “threshold experience,” and from then on, he became one of Williams’s most ardent admirers – in the same way that Williams admired Lewis.
Williams’s influence on Lewis is unmistakable. Before meeting Williams, Lewis’s Christianity was largely doctrinal and rational; afterward, his theology became rather more mystical and incarnational. Concepts like substitutionary love, spiritual presence, and the redemptive nature of suffering – central themes in Williams’s writing – found their way into Lewis’s later works, including The Great Divorce and Till We Have Faces.
Fiction as Theological Alchemy
What made Charles Williams unique among the Inklings was the nature of his fiction. While Tolkien built elaborate worlds and languages and Lewis created accessible fiction (‘supposals’), Williams wrote what he called “supernatural thrillers” – urban fantasy novels where spiritual realities erupted into the mundane world. These clearly influenced the writing of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.
Books like Descent into Hell, All Hallows’ Eve, and War in Heaven take place in ordinary English settings – suburbs, churches, publishing offices – but are haunted by angels, demons, and metaphysical forces. These are not fantasy stories in the conventional sense; rather, they are novels of spiritual crisis, in which the veil between heaven and earth grows perilously thin.
Williams’s stories are often concerned with what he called co-inherence – the idea that human beings are mystically linked and can, in some sense, bear one another’s burdens. This theological concept became a centerpiece of his work and his life. He believed that love, properly understood, is not a matter of emotion but of substitution – entering into the pain of another person.
His fiction is densely symbolic and at times bewildering, filled with alchemical imagery, ghostly manifestations, and theological speculation. But for some people willing to engage with his work, there can be a profound spiritual resonance. In Williams’s novels, reality is layered: the physical world is never just physical, and the spiritual world is always pressing in, demanding attention.
Theologian of the Ordinary Mystical
Williams also wrote a number of theological works that further explored his vision of a spiritually-charged world. The Descent of the Dove traces the history of the Church as the visible expression of divine love throughout human history. He Came Down from Heaven offers a powerful reflection on the Incarnation and its implications for human relationships. These works are marked by a sacramental worldview: the belief that God is not distant but intimately present in the everyday.
His view of romantic and erotic love was also unusually exalted. In books like Outlines of Romantic Theology, he argued that human love could serve as a pathway to divine communion. This idea, while not uncontroversial, was rooted in his belief that the body and soul are inseparable, and that love, when rightly ordered, is a mirror of God’s own relational nature.
Legacy and Influence
Charles Williams died suddenly, eighty years ago in 1945, at the age of 58. His death was a devastating blow to the Inklings, especially Lewis, who wrote that the loss “seemed to me at that moment to be the end of some kind of world.”
Today, Williams is far less read than Lewis or Tolkien. His prose can be opaque, his symbolism daunting, and his theology unconventional. Yet, those who delve into his works, sometimes find a richness and depth that is hard to find elsewhere. He offers a vision of Christianity that is mystical without being escapist, sacramental without being sentimental, and rooted in the conviction that the spiritual is not a distant realm but the hidden dimension of every moment.
In an age that often separates the sacred from the secular, Williams stands as a bridge – a reminder that heaven and earth may be not so far apart as we might think. His life and work can challenge us to see the spiritual significance in the ordinary, the divine radiance in human love, and the cosmic drama playing out in the seemingly mundane.
So, if you’ve walked the roads of Middle-earth and passed through the wardrobe into Narnia, consider taking a detour into the haunted, holy world of Charles Williams. You may find, as the Inklings did, that he opens a door to a deeper magic—one that speaks, not of fairy-tales, but of the very fabric of reality.
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