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
Stephen Hayes
21.09.24
Glad to see they are being republished, but I doubt that they’ll be available in our bookshops in South Africa. Like the cover designs.
Luke
19.08.26
I read and immensely enjoyed enjoyed your Williams biography. Are you aware of any short stories other than Et in Sempiternum Pereant written by him ? It seems strange that it seems the only example from a writer in so many other forms.
Thanks
Grevel
19.08.26
Hi Luke,
Delighted that you enjoyed the book. Yes, it is odd that CW didn’t write any other short stories. I never found any and I suspect there are none. From his comments whilst writing the novels, it seems he wanted more characters and more intricate plots. I don’t even think ‘Et in Sepiternum…’ is a very good story, and it is dependent on ‘Many Dimensions’, using Lord Arglay as the character. On other topics, I’m currently working on an account of W.B. Yeats’s ‘mystical life’, a sort of companion book to the Williams biography. I hope you might enjoy that one day. Thanks and Best wishes, – Grevel.
Luke
20.08.26
Thanks very much for the reply.
I first came across the story in a recorded reading (possibly this one https://m.soundcloud.com/charles-williams-society/et-in-sempiternum-pereant), and have always been fond of it for the strangeness of the house and its setting.
I’d be very much interested in reading the Yeats book !
There is an exhibition on Yeats with a section devoted to his magical interests in the National Library in Dublin which I saw when there & is well worth a visit.
Thanks again, I look forward to the book.
Grevel
20.08.26
Thanks, Luke. Yes, the Yeats exhibition is good! I’m working as steadily as I can on the book, but there’s an enormous amount of very complex material. We’ll get there! All the best – Grevel
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