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Colin Duriez (born 19 July 1947) is an English writer on fantasy, especially that of the Inklings literary group centred around the Christian authors C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Colin Duriez was born in Derbyshire on 19 July 1947.[1] He moved to Leicester in 1983 to work with a small publisher, IVP, as a commissioning editor. He took various teaching and editing jobs, and in 2002 he started his own business in Keswick, Cumbria, InWriting, devoted to writing, editorial services, and book acquisition for publishers.[2]
Duriez won the Clyde S. Kilby Award in 1994 for his research on the Inklings, the literary group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He has been described as "the most useful scholar writing on Lewis today."[3] He has published many books on Christian literary figures, and has spoken to literary, academic and professional groups.[4] His television documentaries include A Quest for Meaning – Myth, Imagination & Faith in the Literature of J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis.[5] He lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.[5]
Benjamin C. Parker, reviewing Duriez's Bedeviled: Lewis, Tolkien, and the Shadow of Evil, writes that the strengths of the book include its thorough connection of Lewis's writings to earlier literature on the subject, and his setting of his thesis about the Inklings in terms of 21st century events and literature. Parker finds the analysis of issues related to Christianity "profound", and states that the book is accessible both to academics and the general public, with the more scholarly details relegated to endnotes.[6]
Courtney Petrucci, reviewing The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien, and Their Circle, writes that the book's "great strength" is "its effective use of other Inklings' writings to give the reader a sense for what the group was like and how its most prominent members [Lewis, Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams] were understood" by the less-famous members. Petrucci finds the book remarkable in succeeding in balancing the coverage, offering fresh "insights and perspectives", and bringing out the complicated ideas that the Inklings discussed while telling the basic story of the group.[7]
John E. McKinley, in his review of the biography Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship and The Inklings Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Lives, Thought and Writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and Their Friends, writes that these are "excellent resources" for readers new to Tolkien and Lewis, and useful too to "devoted reader[s]" of their "imaginative and provocative writings". The biography is in McKinley's view unique in showing how the friendship between the two writers stimulated and inspired both of them "to write Christian mythology and apologetics". He adds that Duriez shows that both men were opposed to the "mechanization" of the modern age; both took "delight in imagination"; and both "embrace[d] historic Christianity".[8]
Perhaps the most useful contribution is the entry, "Literary Critic, C.S. Lewis as a," which sets his critical career in the context of the major movements and schools of critical thought not only in his lifetime but to the present: no small feat. Duriez's remarks, though compressed, are telling.
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