Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Charles Williams in New Oxford Review



In the most recent issue of New Oxford Review (May 2022)there's a wonderful article about Charles Williams.

Charles Williams in Letters & Remembrances - LOVE DURING WARTIME - By Cicero Bruce

"... Williams’s part in this prolific exchange is accessible thanks to the dutiful research of Roma A. King Jr. King’s edition of Williams’s personal correspondence, published in 2002 under the title To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to His Wife Florence, 1939-1945, includes representative selections, painstakingly transcribed by King, from nearly 700 hurriedly handwritten letters. In them we hear Williams at his best — as faithful Christian, loyal husband, caring father, and generous friend — and, occasionally, at his worst — as one who loved human beings but sometimes found them intolerable. What resounds above all else is the voice of a man “honestly struggling,” as King puts it in his introduction, “toward the light beyond the darkness.” ...

The article gives us insights into Williams's faith and fears during the war and separation from Michel due to that war. It additions to excerpts from the letters exchanged with his wife, there is praise for/assessment of Williams by W.H. Auden, Dorothy Sayers, and C.S. Lewis.

A good read.

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