Williams came to Oxford after joining the Inklings. He soon became a fixture there, drawing crowds to hear him lecture on Milton, Shakespeare, romantic love, the Arthurian mythos. His eccentric views exasperated and sometimes infuriated the far more conservative Tolkien. Williams viewed his own wife as "his Beatrice, muse and model of perfection," none of which prevented him from developing passionate, if mostly platonic, relationships with younger women. At least one of these involved ritual sadomasochism, of which Williams wrote in a letter to his paramour: "I am sadistic towards you, but … I wouldn't hurt a fly unless it made it perfectly clear that it liked it. And then only a little. And then only for the conversation."
Review - J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and 'The Fellowship' of fantasy writers www.latimes.com/books/
