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Williams v. Death. In his novels, Williams was fond of building a thriller plot around the intervention of the supernatural in a contemporary setting. War in Heaven involves a cops & robbers chase in modern England for possession of the Holy Grail. All Hallows' Eve tells of the almost successful attempt of a Satanic emissary to capture the world. The basic conflict is always between Good & Evil, rather than between good men and bad.
By ordinary literary standards, Williams' novels are weak in characterization: his actors are puppets on the strings of the Forces that possess and move them.
But Williams' stories cannot be judged as mere entertainment. Beneath their Zoroastrian conflict of light and darkness lies layer upon layer of subtle theological argument and daring Christian speculation. He uses two major themes: 1) the Affirmative Way to God, which joyously accepts all life as bearing the divine image, and 2) the theology of Romantic Love, which sees in humans who are in love a visible sign of the redeeming love of God.
Charles Williams' best epitaph was written by C. S. Lewis, who acknowledged him as the contemporary from whom he had learned most. Wrote Lewis: "No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed."
*Part of one of them, a history of Arthurian, legend which was to have been titled The Figure of Arthur, was published in Britain last week as Arthurian Torso.