Product Description

Critically acclaimed, award-winning biography of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and the brilliant group of writers to come out of Oxford during the Second World War. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends were a regular feature of the Oxford scenery in the years during and after the Second World War. They drank beer on Tuesdays at the "Bird and Baby", and on Thursday nights they met in Lewis' Magdalen College rooms to read aloud from the books they were writing; jokingly they called themselves "The Inklings". C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien first introduced "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Lord of the Rings" to an audience in this company and Charles Williams, poet and writer of super-natural thrillers, was another prominent member of the group. Humphrey Carpenter, who wrote the acclaimed biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, draws upon unpublished letters and diaries, to which he was given special access, in this engrossing story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120713 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'A constantly enjoyable volume' John Carey, Sunday Times 'A triumph of skill and tact... not one dull or slack sentence' Kingsley Amis, New Statesman 'It must be technically very difficult to write a biography of more than one person at a time: it is still more difficult to capture the atmosphere of a group... Mr Carpenter has managed both things admirably' Mary Warnock, Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Humphrey Carpenter was born in Oxford in 1946 and has spent most of his life in that city. He read English Language and Literature at Keble College, Oxford, and met Professor J.R.R. Tolkien on a number of occasions. For some years he worked for the BBC as a radio producer and broadcaster and has won acclaim as a top biographer, including the recent and controversial biography of Robert Runcie.

Customer Reviews

concise, readable and inspirational to other writers
Having read this book just prior to working on my own commission - a biography of folk singer Bert Jansch within the context of the British folk and blues scenes of the early 60s (published as 'Dazzling stranger: Bert Jansch and the British folk and blues revival', bloomsbury 2000) - I found it immensely inspirational. The content, of course, had no bearing on my own work but Carpenter's book gave me confidence that complex interweaving of what are effectively multiple biographies within one book and within a single, binding and (most importantly) eminently readable narrative thrust COULD be done. Further, Carpenter's lean and accessible writing style belies the comprehensiveness of his research. True, one can find more detailed biography on Tolkien and Lewis as individuals elsewhere but Carpenter paints a particularly intriguing portrait of the relatively obscure Charles Williams and builds up a compelling portrait of these writers' interactions from minimal documentary sources but filling the gaps of formal knowledge with great insight and convincing conjecture. His recreation in one chapter, for example, of a typical Inklings meeting in Lewis' rooms is brilliantly done through recreating as conversation views known to have been held by all the participants and, as far as possible, by importing actual sentences and arguments from the various letters and writings of each one. This kind of work is rarely successful in my judgement, but Carpenter pulls it off wonderfully. This book is both a good read for those casually interested in the main protagonists, and - in my view - an inspirational work of research and realisation for other biographical writers. Brilliant!

VERY VERY READABLE
I'm currently doing a research paper on the Inklings and I found Carpenter's biography extremely useful, easy to read, and exciting. He has an incredible way of taking you back to the past and making it come alive.

Very interesting
This book is absolutely great if you want to discover more about Tolkien and Lewis. But what if found the best part is that you discover loads about their friends whom you almost never heard about (at least I didn't). If you want to know more about the ties Tolkien, Lewis and their friends (and their work) had this is the book for you.