Carpenter reveals Williams as - above all - a really interesting person and writer and that is perhaps the biggest favour he could have done for him. Carpenter achieves this by using a framework mostly derived from Warnie Lewis's diaries and adapting passages from then-published writings and other projects that were being worked-on by the participants during this period.Īside from this chapter it is Charles Williams who brings out the best of Carpenter - with a very sympathetic and inspiring depiction of Williams - of a kind which can never again be possible since the sordid revelations of Grevel Lindop's full and detailed biography. My favourite chapter is a really wonderful recreation of an Inklings evening during the 1940-44 period attended by Jack and Warnie Lewis, JRR Tolkien, 'Humphrey' Havard and Charles Williams. In most chapters, Carpenter is able to weave a tremendous amount of information into a fascinating (mostly) triple-threaded narrative principally of CS Lewis and Charles Williams with a fair bit of Tolkien - but less emphasis on JRRT because Carpenter had published the authorised biography just a year earlier. It was a very important book in establishing the identity of the Inklings in the public mind - and it has many virtues. I first read Humphrey Carpenter's The Inklings more than thirty years ago, and have re-read it and consulted it many times since. The paperback version I owned until it fell to pieces from frequent use

Humphrey carpenter the inklings