The Charles Williams Society

Next Meeting April 28, 2012

admin — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:17:23 +0000

Our next meeting will be on April 28th, 2012, at the Oxford Cenre for Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, Shoe Lane, Oxford. The Society will hold its annual general meeting at 12 noon, and after a break for lunch will reconvene at 2 p.m., when our speaker will be Professor Grevel Lindop, givinfg an account of his work on the biograhy of Williams he is writing for the Oxford University Press.

Theology in Action – A Dorothy Sayers Study Day

admin — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:08:19 +0000

Our friends at the Dorothy L. Sayers Society are hosting an upcoming conference: Theology In Action. Click here for more details.

The Future of the Society: April 2011 AGM

admin — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 06:08:44 +0000

At the annual general meeting of the Society, held on April 9th 2011, important decisions were taken on the future of the Society/The Chairman said that there were two great problems facing the Society. One was the composition of the Council. All members had been on it for ten years or more, and were anxious to pass on their tasks, but no-one had come forward. The other was the changes in the world. since our foundation in 1976. Then, no websites or internet existed, and transport was cheaper, so meetings were more popular. We had already reduced our meetings from four a year to two, but attendance was still meagre.

Two possibilities were open. One was simply to close down altogether. the other was to adopt something on lines proposed by Mr. Barber, which are described below and were accepted unanimously by the meeting..

Mr. Barber said that we were a membership organization in order (a) to publish the Quarterly and (b) to hold metings. There was no real need for the latter,and website publication would be cheaper than print. His proposals came under seven heads.

1. We should continue to exist as a society until the publication of Dr. Lindop’s biography. (probably in later 2012 or early 2013).

2. The website, if Matt Kirkland was agreeable, could continue, but with a discussion forum and a section on news and events. Those wishing to contribute to the forum would be asked to register.

3. Meetings could be held in people’s own homes, except for the AGM required by law for charities. Those hosting discussion groups could notify the website with details and a contact email address (not the host’s personal address but a forwarding one working through the website.)

4. Our finances being in a healthy state, we could use our funds to publish or republish uncollected writings by Williams. He had a list of possible suggestions.

5. Negotiations should continue with Judith Wolfe, the editor of the “Journal of Inklings Studies”,, and its parent body, with a view to transferring activities, assets and goodwill to them.. This was a peer-reviewed organ; non-scholarly material could use the website. Archives might continue to be held at the Oxford Centre for Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, as at present; if so, part of the Society’s funds should go to the Centre to support this.

6. If this went forward, membership could be transferred (with obviously the possibility of opting out for those who wished to). [The current subscription to the JIS is £12 a year, so subscription rates would be slightly lower than at present.]

7. If proposal 5 went forward, any remaining funds, together with the libraries and archives, would go to the parent body of the JIS (subject to the agreement of the Charity Commission). Archives should also be supplied to the Bodleian, the British Library, and the Marion Wade library at Wheaton.

Remembering Geoffrey Tinling

admin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 06:04:48 +0000

We have learned recently of the death of one of our oldest members, Geoffrey Tinling. Geoffrey was devoted to the society and will be remembered for his generous and enthusiastic contributions to our gatherings. Together with his wife, Ruth, he was, for many years, responsible for the distribution of the Newsletter and Quarterly. In remembering him with gratitude and affection we extend our sympathy and condolences to Ruth.

Sayers/Williams Papers Now Available

admin — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 06:02:31 +0000

Copies of the papers delivered at the joint meeting of the Charles Williams Society and the Dorothy L Sayers Society at the Michaelhouse Centre in Cambridge last year are now available.

Contents: Brian Horne: The Girl and the City: Charles Williams and Dante, Suzanne Bray: Guilt and Glory: The Message of Charles Williams’ and Dorothy L Sayers’ Festival Plays, Kenneth Picketing: The Found Space, Glen Cavaliero: The Comedic Spirit in Charles Williams.

Cost: £5.00. Obtainable from: The Dorothy L Sayers Society, Rose Cottage, Malthouse Lane, Hurstpierpoint. West Sussex BN6 9JY

Boughton Donation

admin — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:01:53 +0000

The daughter of Brenda Boughton has said that she would like to donate her mother’s copy of the exceedingly rare, and fine, edition of Charles Williams’s Heroes and Kings (The Sylvan Press, London. 1930) to the society. Brenda is one of the last people still alive who knew, and was taught by, Charles Williams. The book will be suitably inscribed and placed in the reference library.

Grevel Lindop lecture

admin — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:00:39 +0000

On Thursday 4th November Grevel Lindop delivered a lecture in London at a meeting of the Temenos Academy in the Lincoln Centre, Lincoln’s Inn Fields on the Arthurian poetry of Charles Williams. In addition to some introductory material on the life and work of Charles Williams for those unacquainted with him, the lecture contained a masterly exposition of several extracts from Taliessin Through Logres.

Dr. Horne reports on October’s meeting

admin — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 05:59:13 +0000

We had a good day conference yesterday here in London. Josh Bradbury gave a paper on the Grail – part of his recently completed PhD thesis on Williams’s Arthurian poetry: Voyages Through Strange Seas of Thought: A Study of Mythic and Sacramental Vision in Charles Williams’s Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars. The afternoon session was given over to a discussion of and readings from All Hallows Eve.

Charles Williams as a literary critic, by Stephen Barber

admin — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:54:44 +0000

The following is an article by Stephen Barber.

Among many other things Charles Williams was a jobbing writer. In that capacity he wrote a good deal of literary criticism. There are five complete books, or rather four and a half, the last being unfinished:

Poetry at Present, 1930
The English Poetic Mind, 1932
Reason and Beauty in the Poetic Mind, 1933
The Figure of Beatrice, 1943
The Figure of Arthur (unfinished), in Arthurian Torso, with C. S. Lewis, 1948

There is also a large number of essays. Some of these were collected by Anne Ridler in The Image of the City, 1958, but many interesting ones were not, and I shall be referring to some of these.

Download the full article to read more…

Heraclitus on the Way of Exchange, by Stephen Barber

admin — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 04:50:04 +0000

The following is an article by Stephen Barber.

Bishop Kallistos Ware once memorably described Williams’s account of heaven as the place of exchange. He summed it up by drawing on a phrase Williams quotes in ‘Bors to Elayne: on the King’s Coins’:

This is the way of this world in the day of that other’s;
make yourselves friends by means of the riches of iniquity,
for the wealth of the self is the health of the self exchanged.
What saith Heracleitus? – and what is the City’s breath? -
dying each other’s life, living each other’s death.
Money is a medium of exchange.

In one of his few notes, Williams gives his source: ‘The quotation from Heracleitus was taken from Mr. Yeats’s book, A Vision.’ This is a little terse, and it is worth following through in more detail.

Download the full article to read more…