Charles Williams – författare

The Descent of the Dove brings the most significant of Charles Williams's theological writings to the modern reader. Tracing the history of the church through the activity of the Holy Spirit, this unconventional and imaginative historical study offers a fresh and accessible perspective on spirituality in the church. By studying the crisis points of theological conflict, Williams remains convinced that theological tensions are not only reconcilable, but indispensable for the church. Willams's work offers the reader a unique analysis of church history by illuminating the crucial role of spirituality in church life, providing salient insights for those interested in the development of the church.

After the Second World War Germany lay in ruins. To Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967) belongs much of the credit for raising West Germany to a position of economic prosperity and making it a respected free-world ally. Adenauer was born in 1876, in Cologne, part of a devout Roman Catholic family. He was elected mayor of Cologne in 1917, a post he held for 16 years, then a representative in the Prussian State Council of which he became president in 1928. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Adenauer was stripped of all his political positions, imprisoned and then sent to a concentration camp. But after the war he organised a new party, the Christian Democratic Union and in 1949 he became West Germany's first chancellor, retiring after four consecutive re-elections in 1963. Charles Williams' magisterial biography of a great twentieth-century statesman - and German - is also a monumental history of modern Germany. The book's four sections: 'The Kaiser's Germany', 'Weimar Germany', 'Nazi Germany' and 'Adenauer's Germany' - bear eloquent testimony to this most singular of nations.

Military hero and national leader Petain's life (1856-1951) embraces a fascinating and dramatic period of French history, and helped define it.

Critical acclaim for The Last Great Frenchman "This is a splendid popular biography . . . recounted with verveand anecdotal warmth, along with fresh appraisals of de Gaulle'scareer as soldier, politician, and head of state." --PublishersWeekly. "Highly readable. . . . It is to Williams' credit that he is ableto get so close to such a prickly personality." --San FranciscoChronicle "Charles Williams has matched a great subject by something near toa great book." --Daily Telegraph (London) "Marvelous vignettes. . . . Williams tells his story with pace andskill." --Martin Gilbert

Critical acclaim for The Last Great Frenchman "This is a splendid popular biography . . . recounted with verveand anecdotal warmth, along with fresh appraisals of de Gaulle'scareer as soldier, politician, and head of state." --PublishersWeekly. "Highly readable. . . . It is to Williams' credit that he is ableto get so close to such a prickly personality." --San FranciscoChronicle "Charles Williams has matched a great subject by something near toa great book." --Daily Telegraph (London) "Marvelous vignettes. . . . Williams tells his story with pace andskill." --Martin Gilbert

First published in 1931, this fascinating story is one of Charles Williams' early 'metaphysical' novels. Set in London, Sir Giles, the nefarious cousin of The Chief Justice of England, Lord Arglay, has obtained by not entirely fair means the ancient gold Crown of King Solomon the Wise. The White Stone of the Tetragrammaton, embedded in the crown, was the key to his wisdom and riches and fame. Sir Giles means to research it and unlock its powers, but lacking the courage to take all the risks himself, he must include others in his plans. Made of the First Matter from the Garden of Eden, the Stone's power grows with the experience of the user and can heal all sicknesses, allow the user to travel in time, in addition to seeing the minds of others. This provoking supernatural thriller shows Williams at his very best.

'There are no novels anywhere quite like them . . . He really believes in what he is talking about.' That was T. S. Eliot writing about the seven novels of Charles Williams. How to describe them? Again, probably in T. S. Eliot's words, 'They may be described as supernatural thrillers; ''popular'' novels in the best sense, by a man who had something important and quite individual to say. When we say ''thrillers'' we mean that their plots are adventurous and breathless, their scenes sometimes entrancing and sometime horrifying; and when we say ''supernatural'' we mean that Williams had a real experience of the supernatural world to communicate. He had a kind of extended spiritual sense: he was like a man who can perceive shades of colour, or hear tones beyond the ordinary range. The theme of all his novels is the struggle between good and evil; and as an interpreter of the mystical experience he was unique in his generation. He excels in descriptions of strange experiences such as many people have had once or twice in their lives and have been unable to put into words. There are pages also which describe, with a frightful clarity, the deterioration and damnation of a human soul; and pages which describe the triumphant struggle towards salvation.War in Heaven was the first in the sequence, published in 1930, and the most conventional of them. It relates the discovery of The Holy Grail in a country church and of the struggle between good and evil forces to possess it. There are detailed and convincing accounts of black magic. The author belonged to A. E. Waite's Christian Rosicrucian order, The Fellowship of the Rosy Cross and was therefore conversant with esoteric rites.All seven novels are being reissued in Faber Finds: War in Heaven, Many Dimensions, The Place of the Lion, The Greater Trumps, Shadows of Ecstasy, Descent into Hell and All Hallows' Eve.

If ideas are more dangerous than material things, what happens when ideas become matter?Near a crossroad in the country town of Smetham, a retired philosopher is felled by what appears to be a huge lion. The lion vanishes, leaving the seemingly untouched man in a coma. But over the next few days, more creatures start to appear - Platonic archetypes stalk the English countryside, and the inhabitants of Smetham begin to display unsettlingly animalistic traits. The worlds of matter and ideas are colliding. It is down to two unlikely heroes to banish the ideas back to the spiritual realm and save the world.First published in 1933, The Place of the Lion is the third supernatural thriller by Charles Williams, a member of the Inklings whose theological interests embraced Rosicrucianism as well as mainstream Christianity.

Those who have read Williams's earlier novels will not want to be told anything about Descent into Hell except that it is one of his best. Those who do not know the author's work will find that when they have read this novel, they will want to read all the others. Highly acclaimed writer of the thriller with a supernatural element, Williams's novels can be read for pure excitement. However, there is also a comedy of manners and acute analysis of human relationships, and finally, exploration of abysses of beauty and horror beyond the borders of the material world. This book, as the title may suggest, is not recommended reading for hyper-sensitive people alone at night in an empty house.

When Lothair Coningsby is bequeathed an antique pack of Tarot cards, he doesn't bargain for the trouble they will cause. The terms of his inheritance mean that Lothair cannot part with the cards in life, and they are to go to the British Museum after his death. But his daughter's fiancé, Henry Lee, a descendant of the Romany people, realises that Coningsby has inherited the original Greater Trumps, or Major Arcana, the most important cards in the Tarot. These cards - including the Juggler, the Hanged Man, the Falling Tower and the mysterious, unmoving Fool - were designed to represent the dance of life itself, along with a set of golden images in Henry's possession. If the two are brought together they will unleash an unknown power upon the world - and Henry is determined to gain possession of the pack.First published in 1932, The Greater Trumps is the fifth of Charles Williams's supernatural novels.

Drawing, the most basic of the visual arts, is often seen as a natural ability, but it can be learnt. Working from observation in pencil, pen, or charcoal helps you to see clearly, increases your visual awareness, and enhances your ability to design in two dimensions. The New English Art Club, an exhibiting society with a 125 year history, runs a school of drawing in which it tries to keep alive the tradition of working from life, which used to be taught in all art schools but is now almost extinct. Charles Williams Cert. RAS RWS NEAC, the current curator, brings together exercises, illustrations, demonstrations, and, above all, the attitude to drawing of the NEAC Drawing School in one comprehensive book. Williams links nineteenth-century artists and thinkers like Walter Sickert and John Ruskin with contemporary writers like Betty Edwards in an attempt to show that to draw is to be a part of a great, living tradition that the contemporary world of photography and digital technology will never eclipse.* Close photographed demos/process* 130+ black and white and colour illustrations* Clear design* Sketchbook sized, convenient, recognisable* Tips, hints, and examples from practising professional artists* Professional, 'manual'-style presentation

African American Life and Culture in Orange Mound is an exploration of the conditions of living for residents of a segregated subdivision in the deep south from 1890 to 1919. It is also a study of contemporary approaches to community building during a time period of racial segregation and polarization. The town of Orange Mound, built by Elzey E. Meacham as an all-black subdivision for “negroes,” represents a unique chapter in American history. There is no other case, neither in the deep South nor in the far West, of such a tremendous effort on the part of African Americans to come together to occupy a carved out space—eventually making it into a black community on the outskirts of Memphis on a former slave plantation. The significance of “community” continues to be relevant to our ever-evolving understanding of racial and ethnic formations in the South. This ethnography of community, family, and institution in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth-century Shelby County Tennessee reveals the richness and complexity of community building through an investigation of cultural and historic community development, settlement patterns, kinship networks, and sociopolitical, economic, and religious value systems in the historic black community of Orange Mound. This research is the product of a thorough ethnographic study conducted over a three-year period which involves participation observation, in-depth interviews, textual analysis of family histories, newspapers, census data, and local government and church records. Even though textual analysis was used throughout the text, its intent was to utilize the concepts and categories that were relevant and meaningful to the people of Orange Mound.

A masterly biography of a great Conservative Prime Minister (and publisher) - Harold Macmillan (1894-1986).Harold Macmillan was a figure of paradox. Outwardly, it was Edwardian elegance and civilised urbanity. Inwardly, it was emotional damage from his wife's open adultery and his progressive perplexity at the onward march of time.The First World War showed the courageous soldier. From then on, it was politics, rather than the family business of publishing, which was to be his future. Nevertheless, although he supported Churchill in the 1930s he was deemed boring - and certainly not ministerial material.All changed with the Second World War. Appointed Minister in Residence in North Africa, Macmillan's career flowered. After the War he became indispensable to Conservative Cabinets and as Churchill's Minister of Housing in the early 1950s he achieved the target, against all expectations, of 300,000 houses annually. Thereafter, he was Eden's Foreign Secretary and Chancellor but by then Macmillan had become openly ambitious. Over the Suez affair in 1956 he played a difficult - and somewhat devious - hand. Eden's resignation left him as the clear choice of his Cabinet colleagues to become Prime Minister.From 1957 to 1962, Macmillan was a good - some would say a great - Prime Minister. By 1962, however, his government was looking tired. The Profumo affair in 1963 was particularly damaging, and in the autumn of 1963 his health forced him to retire.

Amateurs versus professionals - a social history and memoir of English cricket from 1953 to 1963.The inaugural Gentlemen v. Players first-class cricket match was played in 1806, subsequently becoming an annual fixture at Lord's between teams consisting of amateurs (the Gentlemen) and professionals (the Players). The key difference between the amateur and the professional, however, was much more than the obvious one of remuneration. The division was shaped by English class structure, the amateur, who received expenses, being perceived as occupying a higher station in life than the wage-earning professional. The great Yorkshire player Len Hutton, for example, was told he would have to go amateur if he wanted to captain England.GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS focuses on the final ten years of amateurism and the Gentlemen v. Players fixture, starting with Charles Williams' own presence in the (amateur) Oxbridge teams that included future England captains such as Peter May, Colin Cowdrey and M.J.K. Smith, and concluding with the abolition of amateurism in 1962 when all first-class players became professional. The amateur innings was duly declared closed.Charles Williams, the author of a richly acclaimed biography of Donald Bradman, has penned a vivid social-history-cum-memoir that reveals an attempt to recreate a Golden Age in post-war Britain, one whose expiry exactly coincided with the beginnings of top-class one-day cricket and a cricket revolution.

Reappearance of a classic work of Dante criticism interpreting the central female image of Beatrice.Dante is unequalled among poets in conveying an extraordinary intensity of thought and experience, but this very power may make his work seem formidable to approach. Charles Williams's Figure of Beatriceis outstanding amongst Dante scholarship and criticism for the sympathetic enthusiasm and clarity with which he eases that approach without simplifying the achievement in a highly personal introduction to Dante's work. The first half of the book traces the way in which the central image of Beatrice, representing transcendent beauty in feminine form, animates Dante's earlier works. The second half richly expounds The Divine Comedy, meditating on its significance in Dantesque terms.Williams foreshadows the valuable modern emphasis on Dante as philosopher-poet; he also touches on many later concerns in Dante criticism, including ambiguities of language, the inherent self-contradiction ofall powerful discourse, and the place of the feminine. The Figure of Beatrice is also a moving and poetic work in its own rightCHARLES WILLIAMS(1886-1945) is known to many as a prolific and unusual playwright, novelist and critic; his poetic works include `Taliessin through Logres' and `The Region of the Summer Stars'.