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The Oddest Inkling - Charles William... with Sørina Higgins · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives
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brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm an author but also
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I'm a director of the Centre and today I'm joined by a very special guest who is one of the world
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experts on Charles Williams who perhaps we could call the third inkling after CS Lewis and
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Tolkien. So Sorina would you like to introduce yourself and say who you are and where you come from?
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Hello yes thank you so very much for having me on. It's a pleasure to talk to you. I am Dr. Sorina
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Higgins. I currently reside in Waco, Texas where I've just finished my PhD at Baylor University
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and I teach at Sigmund University which is an online institution and yes I've done research
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into Charles Williams but more recently my research has shifted towards William Butler Yates,
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Alistair Crowley and the modern occult movement of which Charles Williams was a member.
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Oh fantastic we must we must talk about that because that's one of his interesting
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differences in a way from the other. Yes, that particular axis in his life. Okay so let's start
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with the basics. I'm not going to assume that people know who Charles Williams is so would you
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like to give us like the headlines on him? Sure so Charles Williams born in 1886 in London and he
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spent most of his life in the city. He was a city boy. He wasn't as into nature as the other
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inklings. Spent a little time outside the city in St Albans, went to university for only a couple
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of years and had to drop out for financial reasons so he was not one of the Oxbridge educated men.
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He was largely self-taught. He began a job at the lowest ranks at Oxford University Press just
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doing the checking of some proofs. I think it was the complete work of Anthony Trollock and then he
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worked his way up. He was doing it alone. He was doing it with Fred Page who became his office
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mate and a very good friend for decades. So he worked his way up the ranks of Oxbridge University Press
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from a lowly proof reader to become a senior editor and through his editorial work and the
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introductions and preferences he wrote and the authors with whom he corresponded and the collections
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he brought together, he actually had a fair influence on the literary tastes of the times and what
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literature was available. He was the first to publish the works of Soren Kierkegaard in England and
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was maybe the first person ever in England's lecture on Kierkegaard as just one example
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of his editorial work. So for most of his life, his day job and his ordinary activities were very
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different from the rest of the inclinings. Now we should mention that though he worked for Oxbridge
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University Press his actual office was in London. That's right. That's right because it was not the
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what we would now call the peer reviewed line of the press. It was academic but for a more popular
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audience work that was what was going on in London whereas Oxbridge was where the strictly
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academic works were being produced. But then in 1939 when the war hit and London was being bombed,
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he did evacuate two Oxbridge and that's when he joined the inclinings for the last six years of
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his life which were six highly productive years. However even before joining the inclinings,
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he was like all of them addicted to writing and he wrote ravenously in all of his spare time
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and then seems never to have slept. So he'll be writing all night. He would carry tiny little
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pads of paper with him wherever he went so you can find him on a train scribbling some esoteric
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poem on his knee while he's in the train or in odd moments at the office. So those are kind of the
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external details of his life. Not a very not a very adventurous in life from an external point of
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view but he had many spiritual intellectual adventures that I'm sure we will get into. He was married
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which is an interesting story. They had one son. He was a member of the Fellowship of the Rosie Cross
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Occult Group for 10 years and then an unofficial member of another Occult Exploration Group for about
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20 years. Let's cover the occult at this point because I think when people hear the occult,
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people assume it means I know weager boards and black magic and things. This is not that. This is
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very much occult as in the sense of hidden private, a sense of magic but it's trying to use it for
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good and healing and sharing of burdens isn't it? That's the sort of philosophy of that group.
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That's the theory. It was weager boards. There was one instance when he walked into a room where
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people were playing with weager boards and apparently it had been doing nothing and as soon as he
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walked in it went mad and told them all sorts of things. The occult groups in which he was involved were
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quote-unquote Christian occult groups. We can get into what that means and how that's possible
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but they did practice many forms of divination, you know, tarot cards, astrology, meditation on
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the Sephirotic Tree from the Jewish Kabbalistic Mystical Tradition. They did practice high ceremonial
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magic with great ritual dressing up, choreography, words of power and so forth. It was not black magic,
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you're right, which is a different tradition and it was meant to do good but it often since it's
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being wielded by weak and sinful people, it often did go wrong and end up in coercion and control
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and even abuse of other people. Yes, there's Gregor Lindock's biography of Charles Williams is very
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interesting on this isn't it with the strange relationships he had with some women as a result of
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this. Yes, so let's think about him as a writer though of course this interest in his private life
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does come so much into his writing. I mean you can't really understand him as a writer without
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having a sense of where he came from. He, as he was saying he was working as an editor and a sort of
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person who set the taste by choosing to write certain introductions and things like that but he also
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started writing poetry and novels of his own which which which we go for first the poetry or
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the novels because they have different beasts. Let's go for the novels first because they're
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easy to understand and I also don't want us to overlook the plays and the nonfiction prose as well
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because those are extremely important. So the novels are the most accessible which isn't
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saying much because for him the bar of accessibility is fairly high but they are
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lively and delightful and strange and memorable creatures. I think one of the things that struck me
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about the novels is that each of them has a very different concept. It's as though he's
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inventing a bit like CS Lewis and Tolkien could be claimed to invent a whole new fantasy genre
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for both of them. He's doing the same but in rapid succession. So you've got the kind of Indiana Jones
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the what's it called the War in Heaven thank you and then you've got the philosophical one with
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the place of the lion which is the amazing one with the platonic ideals breaking through to ordinary
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life and so on and so on and then a very haunting one or Hallows Eve which is in a sort of
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blitz London it's quite extraordinary isn't it that one. Half of the characters are in the
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sort of anti-room to the afterlife. Yes the two characters have been killed immediately
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at the very beginning of the novel but they continue to be active in London and with the lives
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of the living through the whole novel. Yes you're right he picks he chooses as sort of a central
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or sacred object for each of these novels and it's the point around which all the spiritual energy
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turns and it works it works the way a murder works and a lot of murder mysteries. Now how you have
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like say broad church and it starts in this nice quiet little English village and everyone
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seems so nice and ordinary but then the crime is committed and as the story goes forward you start
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to learn all the dark wicked things about each character and before the end you suspect
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everyone. Well the way of crime kind of reveals people's spiritual condition so this sacred object
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in Williams novels reveals people's spiritual condition essentially whether they're on a path
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moving toward God or away from God by how they respond to the object like if they desire to
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possess it if they want to use it for worldly pleasures or for spiritual powers or if they
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are willing to submit themselves to it and not possess it or use it for good. So we have a holy
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grail we have this magical stone in many dimensions, platonic archetypes it's a play in descent
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into hell that's sort of that central object and there's a thing. That one is that's fascinating
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because it does link through to the plays it reminded me a bit of between the acts and the Virginia
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Wolf book which is has another fascination in a very different use of course but this sense of
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the amateur dramatic world of the interwar period yeah and so there's a definitely a sense of how
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societies draw a village society in these cases how all the characters are drawn together by the power
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of the play. So should we talk about his plays then because that's something which doesn't get much
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of a mention just to sort of put in context this is the time when you've got people like T.S.
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Elliott writing murder in the cathedral it's in that tradition of plays isn't it? Exactly and
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that's a perfect comparison because he and Elliott were friends they were pretty close
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they spent a lot of time together he actually said that T.S. Elliott was probably his second best
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male friend after C.S. Lewis later in his life I want the only people who understood him
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and they wrote plays for the Canterbury festival back to back so Williams wrote Thomas Cranmer
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of Canterbury and Elliott wrote murder in the cathedral for the same festival they attended
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each other's productions they went to see other plays together like Neville Coghill's production
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of Hamlet wouldn't you have loved to be there to hear what T.S. Elliott and Charles Williams were
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staying about Neville Coghill's production of Hamlet in which Richard Burton had his debut.
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Oh no that was amazing. Yeah I'm thinking of like Elliott's essays on Hamlet right and the fact
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they both wrote dramas and wrote about Shakespeare it's just that must have been an amazing day.
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Any any extent comment like oh you did a good job or that was pretty ropey. I have not I have
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not seen any of them it's a shame yeah I imagine they liked it. So what's the flavor of Thomas Cranmer
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is it similar with is it a metrical drama like the T.S. Elliott one? Yes it is a first drama
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Williams wrote many first dramas and as a matter of fact he was probably best known as a playwright
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in his lifetime rather than as a poet or a novelist because some of his plays were quite popular
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he often had commissions for ecclesiastical settings he had schools that had had teenage girls
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put on his plays which is funny to think about so yes what is the flavor very bizarre of course
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it's Charles Williams it's very different from murder in the cathedral in its sort of it's
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atmosphere or spiritual sense but it does have some mechanical similarities both set in a historical
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time about a martyr set on locations so you have this kind of meta-performative thing going on
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right the play is happening more or less in the same place the events occurred historically
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and that they both have the main character tempted and wrestling with these deep existential crises
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and in the end having to decide to submit to martyrdom so there are those similarities but Williams
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play is well I was going to say much less narrative but then again murder in the cathedral had
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does some strange narrative things too doesn't it but what makes Williams play distinctive is the
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character of the skeleton so there's this characters named that and who wore one of those
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skeleton suits you know black outfit with the white bones painted on and apparently gave a brilliant
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performance and he acts as sort of a conscience for Thomas Kramer and a temper and a a
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goad and a demonic figure but apparently in the end it turns out he's actually a sort of a
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holy spirit figure he says he's the backside of Christ the skeleton and he's always challenging
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and tempting and taunting Kramer and in the end inspires him inspires Kramer to go running
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towards his doom and to embrace his martyrdom and so he's actually kind of the catalyst for Kramer's
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salvation so he's something of a chorus figure except that he's individual rather than collective
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and he's a mad manic figure who dances and does acrobatics all around the stage and raises all
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these spiritual questions so this is indicative I haven't read that one and I'm definitely going
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to have to now go away and find a copy of it he's quite a lot of my girls with him's material
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these days isn't it unless you've got it is thanks to a couple of publishers working hard on
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reissuing things and getting new things out so that's great I think wrote an exciting moment for
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that but yes we absolutely need a complete place there's a lovely line with a collective plays
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edited by John Heath Stubbs but that's only about half of the plays and there are even still more
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in the Marion Wade Center that have yet to be published so we are getting the sense here aren't we
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that he is a man of very distinctive personality and tastes so I think it might be worth before we do
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the poetry have a look at the theology because and this is an interesting comparison to CS Lewis
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if you think of CS Lewis as being the plain man speaking plain words to people it very much
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you know the communicator on radio as well a lot of his theology started
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Jos Williams is very much the esoteric man having his own sort of approach to theology but it was
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very appreciated at the time and it and it definitely had its audience if you're following
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this at all it's sort of in the evening underhill and more sort of metaphysical kind of way of
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thinking isn't it so tell us a huge thing to do on a podcast but have a go adding a little bit
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about how he approached theology yes well as everything else he approached theology in a highly
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distinctive fashion and I think this is partly because he didn't go through the standard sort of
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Utan Oxford education he didn't read all the same classics in the same order and the same
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commentaries on them so he developed his ideas he was syncratically part of his approach to theology
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can be attributed to his father when he was young he and his dad would go for long walks however
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his father um was extremely near sighted ended up going blind and Charles himself was very near
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sighted so they didn't go for walks to look at the landscape they went for walks to have conversations
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and they would get into deep entangled theological issues and halfway through his dad would make
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them switch sides of a debate so Charles was always having to try out both sides of any conversation
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and apparently he would do this all his life so you'd be halfway into I don't know predestination
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and free will and he'd be arguing for God's complete control of every detail and also he'd flip
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be arguing for free will and you'd have to reorient yourself in the conversation
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but he also was coming at theology with a literary scholar's point of view not a
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theologians so when he read say done scotus who he did he was reading him through the tradition
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of courtly love which as we know is much more of a literary than an actual historical
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tradition so he would get from that these ideas of the place of romantic love in one's theological
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life rather than say a nice tidy history of Christianity and systematic theology or something
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okay but um we should get into some of his really specific ideas and and what he contributed so
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the things that he contributed primarily are co-inherence substitution exchange and romantic theology
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if you have another one we should talk about my understanding is
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enough to yeah I'm headlines only okay and that's pretty dangerous
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although I think with these doctors the more you know the more dangerous it gets
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so his core doctrine is co-inherence and it's founded on the historical Christian doctrine of
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the paracaresis or the dance of the members of the Trinity so the idea that God is
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three who are living in loving harmony and unity as one and then the second notion is the two
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in one nature's of Christ so the hypostatic union the divine and the human nature so you have this
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idea of things that are defined the laws of physics right things we have more than one in the same
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space at the same time whether it's three persons of the Trinity two natures of Christ or then
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Christ in us or us in each other and the two most perfect angels of co-inherence and human
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experience are pregnancy and romantic love because in pregnancy you literally have one person
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inside the other and they are they're not exactly mutually interdependent but they are
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mutually exchanging nutrition and so forth but also ideally love but sexual love was the number
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one example that he used of how humans enact this co-inherent theology so in his strange little book
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outlines of romantic theology which he wrote in 1924 but it wasn't published until after his death
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he argues that any romantic relationship follows the stages of Christ's earthly life
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and so that every couple that is in love are enacting Jesus by their love so he's following
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after Dante in the via affirmative or the affirmative way saying that created things are images of
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God and that we get to know God through them by pursuing those things but he thinks it's
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quite an extreme he's not limiting it to Christian marriage it's just really sort of any sexual
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attraction can be rungs on the ladder to God and while he says that this could be any sort of
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relationship and that it works for either partner the way he writes it does seem to be very much a
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male centered you know the man who has this idealized woman who is amused for him and she's
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sort of upon a pedestal and by idealizing and idolizing her he's seeing God through her although
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he claims it can work the other way around or in any relationship. Rachel that's the Dante
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and Beatrice thing isn't it absolutely that was his model for it and so his final expression of
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this is one of his last books the figure of Beatrice that gets a lot more subtle it's not as
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mechanistic as the early work it's like mapping a relationship on the life of Christ it's much more
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how does the affirmative way work out in history and theology literature and in your life.
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So thinking about the connections to the other inkling so you can see some of this resonance in
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things like till we have faces by C. S. Lewis and even sort of the perilandra you know the
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second of the space the ransom. And I think there's as oodles of proof that C. S. Lewis in particular
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thought Charles Williams was just the bee's knees and absorbed a lot of his ideas and because
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C. S. Lewis it comes out in a slightly well it's a simpler version shall we say than the Charles
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Williams form of this one of the things which I think is particularly interesting and you might
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even see in Tolkien as well this is idea of you had a particular term for it but it's the
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substitution idea that you take on the the burden for somebody else which of course feels a bit
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like Frodo carrying the ring and then I'm carrying Frodo I can carry it sir but I can carry you
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wrap that should be a line from Charles Williams and so perhaps you want to explain a little bit
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about this because you see it in his novels as well to do it in a place when you when you know it's
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there yes so his idea of the way of substitution or the way of exchange exactly it's the idea that
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suppose that you have some very very difficult thing that you're going through suppose you've
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lost a loved one and say you have this burden of grief or you've gotten some terrible news or
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an awful diagnosis and you just feel like you can't handle this mental emotional spiritual burden
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well you could tell me about it and we could make a contract and then I would take it for you
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and you would no longer feel it as a burden now it's not that your memory would be erased or
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anything like that you would still if it were a grief for a lost loved one you'd still be able to
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remember them more them and and honor them but you would no longer feel it as a burden you would be
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lightened and I would carry that burden for you but because it wasn't mine it wouldn't feel as
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burdensome to me either so he bases this on the verse bury you one another's burdens and so
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fulfill the law of Christ and he takes it absolutely literally he says it's exactly like if you're
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carrying a box and your arms have gotten tired and so now the box is too heavy for you I can take
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the box and carry it for you because my arms are not as worn out so it's that literal and there is
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a debate among scholars as to how Christian this doctrine is and how magical this doctrine is
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there are people who find it absolutely inspiring and try to practice this in their own lives there
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well there was there was a Yahoo group called co-inherence.net which I think is hilarious and people
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would get on there and talk about sharing each other's burdens I don't know if there's some
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descendant of that group now I think there is I'm on the side that thinks that it's much more
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magical and that he never really did grow out of his occult training but instead he went on
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to establish his own group the order of the co-inherence or the companions of the co-inherence
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because to my mind this looks more mechanistic than miraculous and it looks to be much more of a
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piece of ceremonial ritual that you perform and it has to happen if you execute the formula correctly
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rather than a much more Christian supplication to God and God being the one who performs it so
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I fall on the more magical side of that but I just want your listeners to know this is a debate
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and not everyone agrees with me yeah and it's certainly something you can imagine the Inglings
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discussing at great length and disagreeing on and toying with and so it's not surprising that we
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see it coming out in how they're thinking of what you do with practice in in their fiction
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there was a conversation oh I wish we had more details we had a letter from CS Lewis to his brother
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saying that they had an Inglings and there was another visitor named Charles Ren and in the course
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of their conversation Ren expressed almost seriously a desire to burn Charles Williams
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as a heretic and we don't know what the doctrine was and CS Lewis goes on to say
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Charles Williams at least makes us understand why people were burned at the stake he is eminently
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combustible so this this world of sort of a particular form of theology it's very much
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lace behind his Arthurian cyclopones which is where I first met your work Serena and I want
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to thank you first of all for supplying a very cogent introduction
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so there's the two collections of the Arthurian cycle are Taliesin through Logras now Taliesin
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just to explain these terms he's the name of a bard a singer who Charles Williams imagines
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that the court of King Arthur is actually a character already existing in folklore and Logras
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is a word meaning Britain at the time and then the second series is called The Region of the
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Summer Stars now these are a series of short poems that sort of joined together like a quilt
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to tell the story of King Arthur's court from the point of view really of the poets in that court
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more or less I mean it's more it's obviously a bit more complicated than that but that gives
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the sort of approach so tell us about what you think are the strengths of this and what's the
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experience of reading them for a modern reader who's thinking I really want to know what his
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poetry is like right the strengths of this cycle are Williams distinctive theological perspectives
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and his willingness to experiment with some modern poetic forms more than perhaps the other
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inklings and there is friendship with T.S. Eliot's and I think was fruitful for him so the poems
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are really balanced in a very careful way on the ancient tree of the Arthurian tradition but
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somewhat metrically experimental and certainly very vivid in their imagery and in the musicality
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of the poems they're absolutely beautiful what is the experience of a reader approaching them
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complete bafflement but as I do say in that introduction tell you some through Logras I think
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that if a reader approaches them first just to experience them like music then I think they would have a
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really enjoyable experience because the poems sound absolutely lovely and we do need audiobooks of
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these and we do need composers to step up and set these to music by the way but if you were to
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read these poems say three times through the first time just enjoy the aesthetic sensory experience
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the gorgeous imagery of roses and heraldic banners and lions and unicorns and the luscious
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clothing of the people in King Arthur's court and the exciting action moments of the battle scenes
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and so forth and then on a second read perhaps start picking up on what are the major themes
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and what are the images that are coming up over and over again and starting to distinguish some of
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the characters because although Williams is not writing strict narrative poetry with details
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character arcs he does occasionally do a deep dive into a character state of the mind state of
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mind the way lyric poetry can do and then finally on a third reading you can start to pick up on
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much more of the plot and the details and the things that Williams is adding to the tradition
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and just to sort of give a spoiler on that what Williams is adding to the tradition
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not surprisingly are his distinctive beliefs, coherence, exchange and romantic theology
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but also the absolute centrality of the grail he did more with the holy grail than probably
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any previous author since Roberto Barone in the 14th century friendship romance which was one of
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his primary sources so he uses the grail the same way that he does in his novels and like all
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those other ritual objects we talked about that each person's reaction to the grail reveals his
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or her spiritual condition and that's specifically revealed in whether they're willing to submit to
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and participate in coherence or whether they insist on being an individual and being free from
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that interwoven fabric of reality basically whether they would rather rain and hell or serve
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in heaven pretty much I don't want to scare people off too much I mean if listeners have
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managed the wasteland for example or they can manage this pretty I mean it's more I think it's
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easier to unpick in some ways than the four quartets I just sweat to see the ray finds readings
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of the you know the stage readings which absolutely brilliant but I did have to read a lot
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in advance to understand them and I think Charles Williams pays off if you give it equal attention
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but it's not so impossible because you've got some of the Arthurian material to sort of help you
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the superstructure underneath you can see where he's varying the tune for example and then you ask
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yourself well why is he varying it what's going on here so in your introduction to you now I'm
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looking at the this description of how he treats history and I think there's another interesting
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link here to particularly to Tolkien the idea that he crunches up basically a thousand years of
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history from the sort of beginning you know what we call the Dark Ages just after the fall of
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the Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople that sort of swath of time which was about 400 to
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about 1600 something like that so if you can imagine that period of history he is dealing
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dealing as if it's all happening in King Arthur's reign so I like this idea that you can sort of
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crunch history together because I think in a sense that's what Tolkien does in he invents a pre
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history and he wants to imagine what it could have been like and I think just at that simple level
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Charles Williams is doing this is what it could have been like so if you if you like that sort of
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reinventing of history it's another reason for thinking about Charles Williams as someone you might
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read it really really is and he does that primarily because he wants to erase the east west
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schism of the church he hates schism he hates division yes so he has this beautiful imagined Roman
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Byzantine empire that never existed historically but it says if what if those east and west
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halves of the empire were completely united and what if England were a province of the Byzantine
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empire not only of the Roman and what would this mean historically and theologically so it
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positions Arthur sort of in dialogue with Constantine really and so you get all the deep theological
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and artistic resonances of those two empire those three empires really the Roman the Arthurian
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and the Byzantine conflated together and I'm just thinking about what because a lot of people who
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listen to this have come from Tolkien that's where they're coming from and I'm just thinking that
32:32
if you if you want to find a sense of some of the really interesting poems about the Roman emperor
32:39
who's a sort of figure in in his city there's a sense of a I know I'm minister of the type
32:47
world and imagine there is there's resonance there there's also sort of the forests and I think
32:55
lapse a lot rather charmingly goes wild is it wolf so many little treasures defined in this sequence
33:05
yeah it is absolutely gorgeous you're right they both love the city and the empire and they see
33:11
glory in those human achievements of the beautiful building of a city and Charles Williams as a world
33:18
builder I think has not been appreciated enough he just he grabs from all these different
33:22
traditions but he does synthesize them he doesn't end up with a hodgepodge as Tolkien accused
33:28
Narnia of being he ends up with something beautifully synthesized of layers and layers of symbolism
33:34
and yet also just real human emotion his poems are frequently spoken in the first person by one
33:42
character or another Mordred gets a poem in which he's just cursing against Arthur it's really
33:48
powerful we get Percival singing one of the songs so you're right there are a lot of beauties
33:55
in this work and I think your listeners would love it it definitely repays the attention given to
34:00
it so don't go expecting to understand it go in the sense go expecting to just enjoy it I think
34:07
it's from somewhere looking at it so it's really obvious that the early death of Charles Williams
34:15
brought to a sudden stop a really interesting career and he wasn't that he he died as a result of
34:22
a operation which he wasn't expected to have any complications from and this was right towards
34:28
the end of the said well war so he suddenly vanishes from the literary scene and I think
34:35
people like yourself are trying to remind us of his existence because he was a bigger deal in his
34:40
time than he is now and he had more influence on people so should we talk about him as a sort of
34:46
influence figure we've mentioned the inklings but he's connected to in other ways to
34:52
well we've mentioned T.S. Eliot but also there's Auden who admired him and others
34:57
do you want to talk about his sort of circle beyond the inklings yes please thank you that's one
35:01
of my favorite things W. H. Auden attributed his conversion to Christianity to the reading of
35:08
Charles Williams works and to meeting Williams several people who met him thought of him as a
35:13
saintly figure so his theological influence but also his literary influence went on and on
35:21
after his death now another person we need to talk about in this connection although he died
35:26
sooner than Williams is William Butler Yates I don't think they ever met in person but they
35:32
corresponded a good deal because they worked together on an anthology that Yates was putting together
35:38
and Williams was editing and of course they were occult cousins because they were in related
35:45
occult groups and their poetry can be very very fruitfully compared and they both have this deep
35:53
profound mysticism shot through all of their works and yet those two poets in their lives
35:59
evolved from sort of a more romanticism through an Edwardian style into very very modern poetic styles
36:07
so it's important to look at those overlapping groups but there was also a generation of young writers
36:14
kind of in the extended Oxford circles who really admired Charles Williams and I think carried
36:20
carried his legacy forward the complete list is in Grebel Linda at the camera right now all of them
36:26
I know Philip Larkin loved Williams works was influenced by it and there were some others in
36:33
that generation of younger poets but then we also see some of his legacy going forward
36:40
in perhaps the more Gothic strain of modern fantasy I think of for instance Madeline Langel and
36:48
Ursula K. Larkin as kind of later people who were carrying on an inklings like legacy but I see
36:57
it even on into things like Doctor Who and the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we have these
37:02
these superhero stories of this main figure with this honestly spiritual power even though they
37:09
often scientize it in those works but those works are the Doctor Who universe and the Marvel Universe
37:16
and DC and so forth it's just the one story over and over again of the central heroic figure who
37:23
sacrifices themselves to save one person or to save the multiverse and frequently comes back
37:31
again so the dying and rising god story connected to the sacrificial story of the co-inherence
37:39
so I think that Williams was part of this really really important network or web in his own time
37:45
with the inklings with the modernists with the alcohol tests and then those influences go on
37:51
and on and on and ways that have not yet been explored thoroughly yeah I mean when you say like
37:57
that of course we can just carry on listing them we've got Ben Kenobi everyone Kenobi we've got Harry
38:03
Potter and I think one of the one of the stories which isn't the dying god one but is from
38:09
um the grail influence is of course Indiana Jones because the last moves in Indiana Jones are
38:16
so totally taken from the Charles Williams playbook so yeah it's fascinating isn't it
38:24
Serena more power to you for your work on Charles Williams I look forward to seeing more of his
38:29
work coming back into more general circulation always end these podcasts with asking where in all
38:37
the fantasy world is the best place for something and I thought in honor of King Arthur and all
38:43
things Arthurian we should ask where is the best place to be a knight where would you choose to go if
38:51
you had to don the armor or the knightly code and go to any world and I suppose it depends if
39:00
you're going for longevity you might not want to go into game of thrones I certainly wouldn't last
39:05
very long there but we ever do want to game oh boy I've been thinking this back in my head the
39:10
whole time we've been talking and I'm really torn and I think I'm going to go with an unexpected move
39:16
because of course I'm expected to say Charles Williams is Byzantine Roman Empire and I will just say
39:22
that would be an awesome place to go if you are both a poet and a knight yeah the valiance and
39:27
is the court poet but he's also Arthur's captain of horse and so he also commands a battle so that
39:33
would be a brilliant place to go but I'm also thinking of the Celtic world of Ternanug and the
39:42
Tuatha de Don and this shadowy Celtic twilight world where you could be a fairy knight and sail
39:50
off to the west and live in this these islands of mist and magic and mystery I think that's where I
39:55
would like to go if I were a knight wonderful I know where I would go there's an American writer
40:03
called Tamora Pierce who wrote a sort of young person's a YA series called The Song of the
40:09
Lioness which is a quartet and it's quite an interesting experience in that it's two twins who swap
40:15
so the girl goes to take the boy's training and the boy goes to be the wizard magician which was
40:21
royal destiny and it's beautifully written wonderfully sort of coming of age story a traditional
40:29
knight's place but it's serious about training I mean there's a lot of detail about how you build
40:33
up muscle strength if you're you know a five foot four girl as opposed to a six foot two boy
40:39
yeah so I think that gives you serious tips so I think that training you might survive as a knight
40:45
for a bit it helps that she's also magical yeah yeah yeah magic and my fault it's a good combination
40:51
yeah thank you so much for joining us and it's been absolutely a joy to talk about Charles
40:58
William so I'm oh thank you so delightful I do hope that I'm most intriguing of the inklings I think
41:04
so the oddest inkling I do hope that your listeners pick them up and try some of the novels or poetry
41:10
or theology whatever appeals to the most thank you very much goodbye all right thank you
41:18
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