CHARLES WILLIAMS: The Novels Renewed!
I’m delighted today to receive three volumes of the new edition of the novels of Charles Williams being produced by the US publisher Apocryphile. They’ve designed the covers beautifully, and these are really the first edition to do justice to these amazing books since they first appeared in the 1930s.
I was lucky enough to be invited to write new Introductions for these three – it was exciting to have the challenge of rereading and rethinking the books from a modern perspective and inviting new readers to enjoy them.
Charles Williams’s unique spiritual thrillers are unlike the work of any other writer. If you haven’t yet discovered them, you should give them a try, preferably in these elegant new editions.
I would recommend Many Dimensions as an ideal place to start, though opinions vary.
Williams’s unique blend of suspense and action with deep spiritual insight is unique. There’s no one else like him. As T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘For him there was no frontier between the material and the spiritual world. ..To him the supernatural was perfectly natural, and the natural was also supernatural. And this…provides both the immediate thrill, and the permanent message of his novels.’
David Llewellyn Dodds
21.09.22
I am happy to have started – back in the day – with the first published, War in Heaven, but it might be intriguing to start ‘in medias res’ with Many Dimensions, which has one character clearly continued from War in Heaven, and so forms a kind of diptych with it.
In any case, these are three splendid ones to read first, or reread again and again.
Grevel
27.09.22
Many thanks, David. Yes, I love all these books and it was a privilege to be invited to introduce them. I’m aware that strictly Many Dimensions follows on from War in Heaven (at las far as Sir Giles is concerned) but in my view it is perhaps a little easier for a new reader to get into. Excellent that Williams’s audience is expanding, though, and interest in his work spreading.
sarah walllis
02.11.23
Hi Grevel I’m reading your biography on Charles Williams avidly. My mother was Joan Wallis whom you interviewed and refer to several times as one of the ‘Companions’.
I also knew Lois Lang-Sims right up to her death. I would really like to contact you to ask you more – is that possible? Many thanks Sarah Wallis
Grevel
06.11.23
Hi Sarah, Many thanks for your kind comment – I’m so glad you are enjoying the book. I remember your mother well, and she was a great help to me in writing the book. I’ll contact you separately by email. Thanks again! – Grevel
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