Roger Scruton — A Deep Philosopher for the General Reader

Our friend Eric Hester, a retired Head Master in England, especially recommends Roger Scruton's books on beauty and wine in the following guest post:

Writing from England, I must say how much I delight in the Tea at Trianon blog.  I never miss a day and always find it vivifying and edifying. Therefore, I am very pleased to be able to share with readers of the blog my good news about the English philosopher, Roger Scruton. He graduated from Cambridge University, Peterhouse (that home of the most egregious dons) in 1965, then pursued an academic career in philosophy, first at Peterhouse, and then at London University until 1990. He currently holds two academic positions: visiting professor at Oxford University, where he is also a Fellow at Blackfriars Hall a Dominican Hall; and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, where he is pursuing a project on the cultural impact of neuroscience. He has written for several journals and periodicals in Britain and America and was, for a glorious period, editor of The Salisbury Review. Left wingers in Britain call him right-wing which means he is not a socialist, thinks for himself, and ridicules the politically correct. He combines, unusually, great erudition with the ability to write in a way that is not merely comprehensible but actually enjoyable. He has been called a "popularist" but I think that is wrong: he is popular because he writes well and thinks of the reader. Scruton is not  a Catholic but, as well as being at Blackfriars, writes with insight and sympathy about matters Catholic and has known as friends, inter alios, the late and great Cambridge chaplain, Monsignor Gilbey, and Professor Emeritus of the History of Architecture at Cambridge, David Watkin, a  Catholic convert. I recommend all of his books but am going to write about two relatively-recent ones.

Beauty was published in Britain in 2009 (and obtainable from Amazon for £6.15) -  a bargain.  As a philosopher, Scruton specialises in aesthetics and he knocks on the head the ideas that all things are relative, anything goes and there is no such thing as beauty. He explores the timeless concept of beauty, asking what makes an object - either in art, in nature, or the human form - beautiful.  Scruton insists that beauty is a real and universal value, one anchored in our rational nature, and that the sense of beauty has an indispensable part to play in shaping the human world. The book is pocket-sized but has some 14 illustrations, themselves worth the price of the book. Scruton writes about beauty in the visual arts, painting and sculpture, but also in architecture, film, music and nature as well as what he calls "the aesthetics of everyday life." This is a book on philosophy for those who do not normally read books about philosophy. At a time when so much is nihilistic, here is a book that affirms the beautiful and the sublime. I especially recommend it as a present for young people just going up to university. It is a book to read, re-read, to keep and to treasure.

I Drink Therefore I am – a Philosopher’s Guide to Wine (2009 £9.95)  The witty title of this book gives expectations that are not disappointed.  When one has a leading philosopher, who is also fluent and witty, writing about his love of wine then the book is one for all lovers of wine. It is not a handbook - so there is not too much about vintages and certainly it is not a catalogue.  Scruton tells something of his own encounters with various wines, at Peterhouse and in various other places throughout the world. So some interesting people are also mentioned.  But the focus is always on the wine and its delights. He gives useful dicta such as "Never drink any fluid that has been kept in plastic." In an amusing final section, Scruton makes suggestions about which wines to drink while reading various philosophers. I have picked up from this book much fascinating knowledge about wine, the sort of things that the ordinary wine books do not mention. Best of all, I have tried different wines and had great joy since Scruton’s recommendation are always of the soundest. I have a reasonable library of books on wine and on philosophy and this book has pride of place in both. In fact, I immediately bought a second copy since the first one I gave away to another wine-lover as a present.  It is now my favourite book on wine and is the book I should recommend for all wine lovers except those requiring a very basic guide. Scruton dwells on the terroir,  the land from which the wine springs.  He is concerned not just with the “body” of a wine but also of its soul. 

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Wellington the Hero

The Duke of Wellington

Eric Hester, a retired head master in England writes about the great Duke of Wellington who can be contrasted with Napoleon as in a fine book by Andrew Roberts, as follows:

A recent post on the noble and edifying Tea at Trianon mentioned Catholic emancipation in England.  A remarkable rôle was played by the Iron Duke, the Duke of Wellington, a Protestant of the Protestants who was Prime Minister.  He was a real hero in England as he had been at Waterloo.

Do we take heed of heroes any more?  When I was head master of a boys’ school I used to ask boys at interview who was their hero or heroine.  Often there was a long pause: saints were frequently mentioned, sometimes a boy’s father or mother which was impressive but never the Iron Duke.  Yet this was a man who ought to be revered by all Catholics.  Born in Dublin of a Protestant family, Wellington acquired the anti-Catholic prejudices of his time.  Yet his nobility and respect for others, especially his fighting men, made him the Prime Minister to grant Catholic emancipation and he was to fight a duel with an extreme Protestant who thought this was a concession to Rome too far.  Before this, he had shown remarkable respect for Catholic beliefs.  When Wellington was Commander in Chief of the British forces in Spain and Portugal, he gave orders that whenever a priest in the streets was carrying the Blessed Sacrament, British soldiers were to stand to attention and present arms.  Thus this Dublin Protestant showed more respect than does many a Catholic today. 

He had to endure obloquy for his granting of Catholic emancipation.  His reasons were not theoretical ones but practical gratitude:  he thought it an injustice that the Irishmen who had fought so bravely and well in the Peninsula and at Waterloo should not be allowed to worship God in their own way.  Again, he could give many modern Catholics a lesson about the meaning of the word “justice”.  About a third of his army was Catholic, recruited in Ireland and Scotland.  In 1829, Wellington challenged to a duel a letter writer in The Standard, Lord Winchilsea, who had berated him for his papist leanings because of his support for Catholic Emancipation.  Lord Winchilsea said that the Duke’s support for King’s College, London (being set up to counteract University College, the Godless institute in Gower Street) would make that college Catholic.  The duel took place on Battersea Fields, and Wellington’s shot grazed the arm of his antagonist who shot into the ground, probably terrified of killing the Prime Minister and hero of Waterloo.  What a more manly way duelling seems of settling quarrels than using spin doctors or paying expensive libel lawyers!

 Wellington and Napoleon are portrayed well in a fine book Napoleon and  Wellington by the eminent English historian Andrew Roberts.  It is very easy reading and is based on the double biography technique started by Sir Alan Bullock with Hitler and Stalin.  Since Roberts is so scrupulously honest, then Napoleon comes out badly.  He was vain, greedy, selfish and, in the end, ruined France.   Napoleon was a racist not just by today’s definition of that term but even by the standards of his time.  When Toussaint, a genuine popular leader in Saint-Dominique, hopefully sent Napoleon a copy of a constitution for the Island, the enraged and clearly racist Napoleon shouted: "I will not rest until I have torn the epaulettes off every nigger in the colonies."  Britain had abolished slavery in her colonies but Napoleon, wherever he could, reinstated it in the name of “liberty” and disenfranchised mulattos throughout the French colonies.  This is glossed over in many histories: whenever the words “Liberty, equality and fraternity” were proclaimed they brought with them tyranny, oppression, torture and death.  Napoleon exiled Pope Pius VII and crowned himself as emperor.  While Wellington’s family gained nothing from his elevation, Napoleon had the gall to make his own unworthy brothers actual kings. 

Wellington spoke of Napoleon with respect, “I should rather hear of the French having 40,000 extra men that that he were to command their forces” – and actually protected him in June and July 1815, as a chapter of Roberts’s book makes clear.  Napoleon gave no honour to Wellington except when he was trying to save his skin.   On the morning of the battle of Waterloo at Le Caillou farmhouse, Napoleon said to General Soult: “Because you have been beaten by Wellington, you consider him a great general.  And now I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, that the English are bad troops, and ce sera l’affaire d’un déjeuner.”  As another great English hero, Churchill, might have said, “Some affaire, some déjeuner!”  Roberts then shows a final piece of infamy from Napoleon, in his will: he left 10,000 franks to a M. Cantillon, a crazed Frenchman who had tried to assassinate Wellington.  

Wellington maintained his sense of humour as is shown in the following from a dispatch that Wellington sent in 1812, responding to a demand from the bureaucratic War Office in Whitehall, London,  for a full inventory: 

Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I crave your indulgence.  Unfortunately, the sum of 1s 9d remains unaccounted for in one battalion’s petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in Western Spain.  This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of the circumstances since we are at war with France a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.

King George IV’s Queen, Caroline, was not all that she should have been and the King was about to divorce her for her infidelities but she was pretty and the crowds liked her.   She was a kind of Princess Diana figure of her day.  A London mob, rioting in favor of Queen Caroline, stopped Wellington’s coach and asked him if he supported Queen Caroline; the Duke replied, "Well, gentlemen, since you will have it so - 'God save the Queen!' - and may all your wives resemble her."

Teachers, might like to take Wellington as a caution against writing boys, or girls, off at an early age.  At Sandhurst,  where British Army Officers are trained, there used to be a framed document asking the reader to read that side first: on it  there was a school report of a boy described as lazy, stupid and feckless who would never make anything.  When one turns the document over, over all is explained: “that was written at Eton about Arthur Wellesley, subsequently  Duke of Wellington, commander in Chief of the forces against Napoleon, hero of Waterloo, Prime Minister of Britain, Chancellor of Oxford University etc, etc.”  Wellington, like Churchill, did not do much at school.

The last paragraph of Roberts’s book is a sad and chilling one as he comments on the present day.

Napoleon’s programme, of a politically united Europe controlled by a centralized (French-led) bureaucracy, of careers open to talent and of a written body of laws, has defeated Wellington’s assumptions of British sovereign independence, class distinctions and the supremacy of English common law based upon established, sometimes ancient, precedent.  ‘I wished to found a European system, a European code of laws, a European judiciary,’ wrote Napoleon on St Helena.  ‘There would be one people in Europe.’  There is some irony in the fact that Waterloo was fought a mere twelve miles from Brussels, the capital of today’s European Union.  For, although Wellington won the battle, it is Napoleon’s dream that is coming true.

We gave them an inch and they have taken a kilometre. 

Tourists to London can visit Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, Wellington’s house and now a national museum under the jurisdiction of the Victoria & Albert Museum.  As well as many items of Wellingtonian memorabilia, there is a marvellous art collection.  Grateful Spaniards gave their liberator pictures by the local lads such as Velasquez, Murillo and Goya who painted the Duke himself.  When shall we see his like again?

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Monsignor Alfred Gilbey

Eric Hester, a retired head master, who now writes some Catholic journalism, sent me the following:

A recent post on the noble Tea at Trianon website about a distinguished Oxford University Catholic Chaplain, Monsignor Ronald Knox, has led me – to be fair – to put something about a great chaplain at the other place: Monsignor Gilbey who was chaplain, to the Catholic undergraduates in the University of Cambridge from 1932 to 1965 – 100 terms. When he died, aged 97, in 1998, one obituary said he was “the best loved priest of his generation.”

Alfred Gilbey, having been educated at Beaumont, (a Jesuit boarding school on the Thames near Eton, which the order later closed) he then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, subsequently, after his ordination, returning to Cambridge as chaplain. He remained there for 33 years. He then lived in London, “ in retirement” for 32 years.  His leaving of the chaplaincy was a disgrace. Those who know what happened can hardly bring themselves to mention it: it was concerned with his not wishing to integrate the men’s and women’s chaplaincies into one. In retirement he was granted the singular privilege of living in a famous London club, the Travellers’, in Pall Mall where the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Heenan, gave him permission to say the old Mass in his room.  He also went to say Mass at the London Oratory, often known as the Brompton Oratory.

His time as  Cambridge chaplain was a fruitful one and one of joy.  The obituary in the London  Daily Telegraph said: “His extraordinary influence as chaplain was due in part to his piety, his rock-like faith and his ability to explain Catholic beliefs in clear and simple terms; and party to his kindness and friendliness, his sympathy, his courtesy and charm.” This is a man who appreciated good food and wine – especially claret from his family firm, which still imports gin and claret into England.   He was a member for years of the Trinity Foot Beagles – an organisation who hunt with dogs but follow on foot rather than riding.   But he was no snob or neglecter of his duty.  Professor Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity, former President of Magdalene College (and whose book The Stripping of the Altars is a classic) said of him:  “Alfred Gilbey was a man of disarming simplicity, in whom social decorum blended indistinguishably into the life of grace.” In his retirement, even as a very old man he still responded to sick calls and was at the side of the dying.

Then there are all his converts. To change slightly Mark Antony’s famous words, “He hath brought many converts home to Rome…” In our days when an individual convert is amazing news, it is difficult to grasp that Monsignor Gilbey instructed hundreds of converts. He was clear what he was about. He once told a journalist; “Conversion? No, I’ve never done that. I receive.  I instruct.” One of the most distinguished is  Professor David Watkin former fellow of Peterhouse (one of the oldest Cambridge colleges) and Professor of the History of Architecture, the author of such fine books as Morality in Architecture Revisited. Professor Watkin has written with a real love of the man who received him into the Church in 1963. He expressed sadness at Gilbey’s resignation from the chaplaincy before he had intended to go: “a victim of Vatican II, though he would not have put it like this.”

Trinity College, Monsignor Gilbey’s college, vies with King’s as the grandest of the Cambridge colleges. A member of the aristocratic Lambton family in the early 1900s is said,  when asked at Newmarket (the racecourse near Cambridge) which college he attended, to have replied: 'Don't know. Trinity, I suppose. But it was the college of  inter alios, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore and Wittgenstein not to mention Isaac Newton who discovered the law of gravity when an apple hit him on the head in Trinity gardens and he speculated as to why it fell down and did not go up. Trinity claims to have been the home of more Nobel Prize winners than Japan.

Monsignor Gilbey was always faithful to the Church, though one who knew him says that “Of the many changes in the Society of Jesus after the Second Vatican council and the closure of Beaumont, his old school, he could hardly bring himself to speak, so painful he found them.”  His views on education were sensible and, therefore, are now very unfashionable. Nicholas Lorriman wrote of him: “Alfred’s view of education was necessarily ‘vertical’ and hierarchical, the duty of the educator being to draw those in his charge up towards the highest values, not degrade them to some socially engineered common denominator.” He wrote a book of instruction called We Believe, now out of print, I fear, but if you come across one buy it because it is better on the beliefs of the Catholic Church than anything produced by the committees of bureaucrats for the last thirty years, though this is faint praise. His Monsignor Gilbey’s Commonplace Book is a mine of fine and delightful passages and again should be snapped up if a copy is found.  A wonderful book, edited by David Watkin, is Alfred Gilbey: A Memoir by Some Friends  but it was published privately and copies are very rare; I keep mine under lock and key.

Monsignor Gilbey gave good advice not just about spiritual matters but about life, such as about how to order from a menu: always choose your main course first and then your first course to go with it and not the other way round.  It is, however, the piety of the man that made the greatest impression on all who knew him.  RIP.    

Monsignor Gilbey's obituary, HERE.
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A Christmas Carol

English journalist Eric Hester discusses the Christmas classic, saying:

No one is going to deny that this book is a classic but I can hear the cries that Dickens was not a Catholic. I do not claim that Dickens was a Catholic; obviously he was not. I simply claim A Christmas Carol as a great Catholic classic.

Let us examine one important piece of evidence. Everyone knows the famous first sentence of this novel: “Marley was dead: to begin with.” Marley’s ghost is famous, even to those who have not read the book but have seen one of the many film versions. So I pose this question: from where does Marley’s ghost come?” There is only one possible answer: purgatory. Now purgatory is a very Catholic idea. Marley, you may remember, is described by Dickens as having to pull a long chain of cashboxes and other impedimenta.

He has to wander the earth. Of whom does he obviously remind us? why, of Hamlet’s father’s ghost. And Hamlet’s father’s ghost was from purgatory. We know that Dickens was fascinated by all Shakespeare’s plays but especially by Hamlet. Remember in Great Expectations, where the comic character Wopsle becomes an actor and, to the jeerings and barrackings of the audience, acts the part of the Great Dane.

More that this, Dickens mentions Hamlet’s father’s ghost on the very first page of A Christmas Carol only a few sentences after telling us that Marley was dead: “If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, that there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot.”

The next obvious Catholic feature in the little novel is one of the things that everyone knows about it: its stress upon the celebration of Christmas. This was, and is, a Catholic thing to do and not a Protestant thing. We know from our history that the great villain, Oliver Cromwell, tried to ban Christmas altogether and to abolish all customs and traditions associated with it. Later puritans, like George Bernard Shaw, were to try something similar. The great rehabilitator of the Catholic celebration of Christmas was Dickens in this very book.

It has become a byword for celebrating a “Merry Christmas”, and “merry” is the word that Dickens actually uses, reminding us of “Merry England”, the Catholic England of the middle ages. Marley, and Scrooge before his conversion, are the very epitome of the Protestant work ethic: the worship of the false God money. The Cratchits represent the family celebration of Christmas with their eating of the goose and their drinking of what little liquor they had – “Some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons” with the Christmas pudding with its “half-a-quartern of ignited brandy”.

For Dickens is no puritanical teetotaller: he recognises, as good Catholics do, the value of alcohol used properly. It has always bewildered me how some say that to drink alcohol is forbidden to Christians when Our Blessed Lord’s very first miracle was to change water into wine. One is only disappointed that Dickens was not at Cana in Galilee to have described that wedding feats. St John does not do a bad job but Dickens would have described the idiosyncrasies of the master of the feast, and made our mouths water with the food on the table, as he does the Christmas shops in A Christmas Carol.

“The Grocers’! oh the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest looker-on feel faint and subsequently bilious.

Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress: but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, clashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and come running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.”

The Cratchits are among Dickens’s greatest creations. His pro-family and pro-life views are another Catholic feature. The unredeemed Scrooge had told those collecting money for the poor that the poor could die and “decrease the surplus population”. Just like a United Nations Commission today on the people of Africa. But the Ghost of Christmas Present throws his own words at him when Scrooge later enquires about whether Tiny Tim will live: “Oh kind Spirit! Say he will be spared.” The ghost says, “If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” This is followed by some of Dickens’s most vituperative words:

“Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! To hear the Inspect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”

Another Catholic characteristic of the book is its juxtaposition of humour, and sadness, almost tragedy. This is something found in Catholic English writers such as Chaucer and Shakespeare but it tended to end at the so-called reformation. The great twentieth century poet and critic, T.S Eliot, said that a “dissociation of sensibility” took place at that time. Thus every Shakespeare play, even the starkest tragedy contains humour. Consider the Porter Scene in Macbeth just after the murder of Duncan. Then consider the Protestant Milton. Certainly he is a great poet but where is the humour? The great Dr Johnson issued the most damning criticism of Paradise Lost, when he said that no one ever wished it a line longer than it is.

Now, in A Christmas Carol, Dickens has humour and sadness side by side not just in the plot but even in the same character. Scrooge is a sad character and very nearly a tragic one; however, even from the beginning he is also comic. It is worth stating that the French protestant novelists, Zola, Gide and Sartre, are all deficient in humour. Those who were Catholics, even if not very good ones like Proust and Balzac, have humour and tragedy interspersed. Henry James, American Unitarian, has no humour. Evelyn Waugh, Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton are full of humour. Not surprisingly, Chesterton has written about the greatness of Dickens.

Our book is about redemption, a very Catholic theme. Scrooge is like St Paul, St Francis of Assisi and the other great converts who change their lives. He is in the great tradition of the sinner who repents.

All this makes for a very Catholic book. I recommend it strongly for Christmas reading. Its five chapters, or “staves”, as Dickens calls them since it is a “Carol”, make for five sectional readings. And do read it aloud. Most books are good when read aloud and Dickens is the writer par excellence for reading aloud. He himself used to perform before audiences. If you are reading the book to children, then you might decide to make the occasional judicious cut. But not much. Perhaps the reference to something in the nineteenth century.

But never underestimate children and do not leave something out just because it seems to have a difficult word in it. If you have a few copies - and a good paperback can be obtained for two pounds - then you could even dramatise it with your children or grandchildren for Christmas. This is not difficult. Let one of them read the words of Scrooge, one the words of Marley’s ghost, one Bob Cratchit and so on while keeping the narrative part for yourself to hold the whole thing together.

There have been several film versions of the book, that with Alistair Sims in the old black and white one being probably the best. But a film version is never so good. How, for example, can a film producer convey this:

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire: secret, and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it out one degree at Christmas.” No use having pictures of grindstones and oysters. It is Dickens’ words that work the magical effect.

The ability to laugh at yourself is a fine one, and one I learned with much other wisdom from Dickens. Laughter is very necessary in life alongside life’s more serious concerns. All life is to be found in Dickens, especially in A Christmas Carol. “God Bless Us, Every One.”

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Discovering Our Glorious Faith

Today we have a guest post by English journalist and retired headmaster Eric Hester who has reviewed some DVDs by Daphne McLeod.

DISCOVERING OUR GLORIOUS FAITH

By Daphne McLeod (four DVDs from EWTN)

Reviewed by Eric Hester

For those trying to teach the faith there is a dearth of good materials. Of course, there are the catechisms: The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the old Penny Catechism. Both of these are essential and awesome in their depths and simplicity. But there is a shortage of other materials. After all, when the faith was still taught properly in Catholic schools, it was not just a question of The Catechism: children heard sermons from their parish priest about the faith every Sunday; they had parish missions and retreats; and in the schools, the teachers of all subjects incorporated material about the faith into their lessons.

All this has gone. And so these DVDs from EWTN will be literally a Godsend and an answer to prayer to anyone trying to hand on the faith. The format is quite simple: they are DVDs made from Daphne MacLeod’s programs on EWTN. But if they are simple in format and in style, they are profound in their faith. I cannot recommend them too strongly.

First, as anyone would expect who knows Daphne McLeod – a stalwart teacher of the faith in England over the years – they are the real one hundred per cent authentic Catholicity. Not a word is ever ambiguous let alone confusing or misleading. Cardinal Manning said that for the good teacher, the faith should shine out of the eyes, and the Catholic faith shines out of Daphne’s eyes and is present in her voice. In the very first lesson, she explains that she is not going to give out her own views: she is going to proclaim and explain the teaching of the Catholic faith.

This she does, going through four big areas: Almighty God, His Nature and His attributes; The Blessed Trinity; Sanctifying Grace (the Sacrament of Baptism); and the Moral Law The Sacrament of Penance.

In fact, the sacraments are all covered thoroughly in general and as individual entities. So is prayer, Original Sin, Our Blessed Lady, the Blessed Sacrament, original sin and all that should be in a basic course on the faith.

One might think that the format - Daphne’s talking at the camera - might be dull but it never is. Daphne has a most attractive manner and voice. She comes across as a kindly aunt who has discovered the most amazing secret and cannot wait to let everyone know about it. Never is she condescending, but she makes frequent use of anecdotes and homely comparisons to make an explanation. There are good illustrations, but there are no gimmicks and all is most tastefully done with especially good use of great art. The viewer is expected to concentrate and is given help to do so. In total, there are some 13 half-hour talks, but they are subdivided into units of about quarter of an hour.

The DVDs would be especially useful for teachers: those in Catholic schools, those helping at the parish level, home schoolers, or simply parents who want to pass on the faith to their own children. They are not designed mainly for children, though even young children would benefit from watching some parts and older children – from fifteen years onwards – could simply watch the lot, preferably with an adult present to discuss and to explain.

I should encourage anyone interested to obtain the set: you will not be disappointed.

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Promising

Our friend Eric Hester sent along a review of The Young Victoria which extols the historical accuracy of the film. It sounds quite promising. To quote:

The story is about how the politically-arranged marriage between Victoria and Prince Albert none the less turned into a genuine love match. Normally, filmmakers would have pared all the minor characters away to mere caricatures, yet this movie features the interaction between such esoteric figures as Baroness Lehzen, Sir John Conroy, Baron Stockmar, Lady Flora Hastings and any number of others whom one would otherwise have come across only in the pages of Elizabeth Longford's biography of Queen Victoria or the second volume of Lord David Cecil's life of Lord Melbourne.

With Hollywood movies such as The Reader asking us to believe that a Nazi concentration camp guard would willingly face life in prison sooner than be unmasked as illiterate, and U-571 claiming that the Americans rather than the Royal Navy captured the submarine codebooks that allowed Enigma to be decrypted, it is a liberating experience to watch a movie whose screenplay (by the British writer Julian Fellowes) is based on the most important primary sources of the early Victorian period. Swathes of the script stem directly from the reported speech of the real people themselves.

Where there are inventions in the movie – Albert is shown attending the Coronation, for example, and being grazed by the bullet during one of the many assassination attempts on his wife – these in no way intrude or detract.

The Young Victoria opens in theaters tomorrow. I'll be posting a review soon. Share

Reflections on Burke

Our friend Eric Hester found an excellent article by Gertrude Himmelfarb called "Reflections on Burke's Reflections" from The New Criterion. It is worth a careful reading. To quote a portion of it:

Edmund Burke was, and still is, a provocative thinker—a provocation in his own day, as in ours. At a time when most right-minded (which is to say, left-inclined) English literati were rhapsodizing over the French Revolution—Wordsworth declaring what “bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”—Burke wrote his Reflections on the Revolution in France, a searing indictment of the Revolution. He was accused then, as he often is now, of being excessive, even hysterical, in his account of the Revolution:

a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices, … laws overturned, tribunals subverted, industry without vigor, commerce expiring … a church pillaged … civil and military anarchy … national bankruptcy.

All this, one must remember (it is sometimes hard to remember), was said in November 1790, three years before the Reign of Terror, which Burke was so presciently describing.

While others were witnessing what they took to be a natural and much needed political revolution, the transformation of an absolute monarchy into a limited monarchy, Burke saw nothing less than a total revolution—a social, religious, and economic revolution as well as a political revolution. And beyond that, a cultural revolution, “a revolution,” he said, “in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.” This was well before the momentous events: the abolition of the monarchy and establishment of the republic; the execution of the king and queen; the declaration of war against much of Europe (and England); the confiscation of the property of dissidents and emigrés; the imprisonment, expulsion, and assassination of more moderate (and not so moderate) revolutionaries; and, finally, the establishment of the Reign of Terror. Three years before Robespierre came to power, Burke took the measure of the man and his regime.

Justifying perfidy and murder for public benefit, public benefit would soon become the pretext, and perfidy and murder the end; until rapacity, malice, revenge, and fear more dreadful than revenge could satiate their insatiable appetites.

This was the Revolution Burke described—or, rather, predicted—in his Reflections on the Revolution in France—an extraordinary feat of political imagination. Burke’s critics have never forgiven him for that “premature” account of the Revolution, for recognizing the seeds of the Terror so early and so dramatically. Nor can they forgive him for revealing the flawed philosophy and the temper of mind that had inspired the Revolution and had made it so total. In this sense, the Reflections was even more provocative than it seems on the surface, for it was an indictment not only of the French Revolution but of the French Enlightenment, which was even more revolutionary, aspiring to create nothing less than an “age of reason.” This is why so much of the Reflections went well beyond the Revolution itself, reflecting upon the nature of man, society, politics, religion, and much else—reflections, I may add, that are as provocative and challenging to conservatives as to liberals.

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Pope Benedict's Bavaria

English journalist Eric Hester has kindly offered to share with Tea at Trianon some photos and reflections of his pilgrimage to Bavaria in 2005. He also went into Austria. I have been to the wonderful restaurant in Salzburg that he mentions. After reading Mr. Hester's article, I am ready to go back.

Share Pope Benedict’s joyful enthusiasm for his beloved Bavaria

By Eric Hester

In 2005 I had a holiday – better to call it a pilgrimage – in Bavaria with my wife, her sister and husband, which made me very clear that it is no accident that this wonderful area has produced a pope. This year the four of us went again and found it just as good.

What a marvelous area Bavaria is! The people are a sunny, courteous, hospitable, kind, generous people with a great capacity for enjoying life.

Best of all, they are intensely Catholic. Not only in the public hotels where we stayed were there were crucifixes and statues of Our Blessed Lady but also on the corners of buildings and inside shops such as the Chemist’s. The standard Bavarian greeting in shops and everywhere else is not the normal German Guten Tag but Grüss Gott! “God’s greetings."

We flew from London Stanstead to Munich in 2005 and picked up a hired car, but this year we flew to Salzburg which, though in Austria, is just as handy. Again, we made our base the town of Traunstein. This is where the young Joseph Ratzinger lived from 1937, his father being the local policeman, where he had his “gymnasium” or grammar school education at the diocesan junior seminary, and where after ordination he said his first Mass. He calls it the most beautiful town in the world and, even allowing for his bias, one has to admit its charm. That the Holy Father has happy memories of it is not surprising.

We stayed at the Parkhotel Traunsteiner Hof hotel and it is one of the best we have ever been in. At this hotel, you will see a very beautiful statue of Our Blessed Lady on the main stairs. The food is excellent, with drink to match, not just Bavarian beer, but wines of the highest class. The hotel is a family one that has belonged to the same family since the nineteenth century. The present owner greets one at breakfast and again goes round to each table at dinner. An article such as this cannot go into details of prices but it is worth mentioning that this hotel was considerably cheaper than a certain famous hotel in the middle of Oxford where we stayed recently.

Apart from being a wonderful place in itself, Traunstein has the advantage of being on a good railway line with Salzburg only twenty minutes away and Munich not much more than an hour the other way. Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart, has its own charms and delights. We had lunch and dinner at The Stiftskeller St Peter, a restaurant some 1200 years old, which counts Charlemagne among its guest list and is mentioned by the Anglo Saxon writer from York, Alcuin. The food is wonderful and includes the famous Salzburgernockerl, a fine concoction of a dessert. While we had dinner there, in between courses, we were entertained to beautifully sung extracts from The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute. The proximity of Austria to Bavaria was a factor mentioned by the Holy Father in his book, which I recommend, Milestones, published originally under the name of Joseph Ratzinger.

Traunstein is also near the great lake Chiemsee, where, can you believe it, you can take boat trips to two inhabited islands on both of which there are churches with daily Mass and on one there is the extraordinary palace of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, something not to be missed. Those who visit the Tea at Trianon website will love this palace. It was intended as a replica of Versailles and, though unfinished, it has a Hall of Mirrors and other reminders of the French Court. It is surrounded by beautiful gardens and fountains.

In 2005, as we drove from Traunstein to our next base, Altötting, we were able to take in Tittmoning, a beautiful town where the Holy Father lived from 1929 to 1937 and which he obviously loved. This is not surprising. It is a gem. The Holy Father says of it: “Tittmoning remains my childhood’s land of dreams” and says, quite rightly that “it has a square that would do great honour to bigger cities.” As the Holy Father mentions, one can simply walk across the bridge over the river and into Austria. The half-day we spent there hardly did it justice.

We had decided to stay at Altötting in 2005 because of the Holy Father’s own recommendation of this city with a great Marian shrine. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he had written the Foreword to the town guide that we found so useful and he writes in the Guide: “I was very lucky to have been born near to Altötting and so pilgrimages together with my parents and family to this place of grace form a part of my earliest and most treasured memories.”

He ends his two-page introduction by saying of the Guide, “I hope that this book will not only be a guide to its exterior, but also a guide to its interior which helps readers to experience the grace of the city.” How many places have an entry from the Pope in the local guide? This tiny city does not disappoint. It is like a very small version of Lourdes but without the crowds or commercialisation.

The actual shrine to Our Blessed Lady of the Black Madonna is most moving and one can attend daily Mass there or at one of the other churches. In fact, nowhere in Bavaria will daily Mass be a problem.

We stayed here at another outstanding hotel –the Hotel Zur Post, right in the main square, and with outstanding cuisine and, as everywhere, scrupulously clean rooms and excellent facilities including a swimming pool. Best of all, one can sit outside and eat, and drink beer or tea.

From Altötting, Marktl, the village where the Holy Father was born, is a quarter of an hour by car. This sleepy little village is now on the tourist trail. The house where the Pope was born is right in the middle. There is a lovely little tourist centre where charming people proudly give information and advice. They have the air of a man who has won the lottery three weeks running. They are determined to preserve the character of the village while making it a proper venue for tourists.

The little church where the baby Ratzinger was christened Joseph on the day he was born, Holy Saturday, April 16th 1927, is proud of its most famous son. The banner stating Habemus Papam has a different meaning from the obvious one. Yet this church was the only disappointing building we saw in Bavaria in 2005 since it had been badly modernized. The village, otherwise, is much as it must have been over the years – of course, the beer gardens and inns sell Papst bier, “Pope’s beer,” but I cannot see anything offensive in that; we drank some and it seemed just as good as the other splendid Bavarian beer.

Another place not far from Altötting is the magnificent city of Passau, with its dignified cathedral containing the world’s biggest organ which we heard played in an organ recital, as happens virtually daily. Three rivers meet here, and one can, as we did, go on a mini-cruise on the Danube to see something of the city. We had a magnificent day out in Munich a city with fine buildings and an art gallery of world importance. When we were there just over a month ago, the Beer Festival was in full swing and yet we saw nothing of the unpleasantness that accompanies such events in England.

One remarkable feature is that the Bavarian and Austrian people are among the few in the world who wear as a matter of course, their national costume on ordinary days. The men wear coats, suits, waistcoats and other items of what we in England call Loden, a beautiful wool, mostly but not always in dark green. The ladies wear loden items such as coats and may also wear dirndl skirts. In the shops, on the street and, of course, in the churches, one sees these elegantly dressed people.

I spoke to a few people involved in the media and I was grossly embarrassed that they had become aware of the appallingly insulting treatment of the new pope by the British media, especially the BBC. What is one to say to fine young Bavarian Catholics when they quote the references to “rottweilers, panzers, Nazis, and Hitler Youth?"

They were surprised when I told them that most English people, and almost every single Catholic in England – except for the odd weird dissident - welcomed the pope as the obvious choice and a man of deep spirituality and integrity. They were pleased when I told them that at the church my wife and I attended in Bolton, the parish priest invited all the congregation to drink champagne with him when the news of the election broke just before the evening Mass.

English and American people who respect tradition and love the Catholic faith will find that Bavaria is the ideal place for them for a holiday that is also a pilgrimage.

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A Benedictine Jewel in Burgundy

In September 1999 my husband and I had the pleasure of visiting the Abbey of St. Joseph de Clairval in Flavigny. Reader Eric Hester recently made a retreat there and describes it better than I ever could. Thank you, Eric!

A Benedictine Jewel in Burgundy

By Eric Hester

Those who visit the Tea at Trianon website appreciate things of beauty but know that true beauty is found, as Keats suggested, in truth and holiness. I, therefore, recommend to everyone the Benedictine Abbey of St Joseph de Clairval in Flavigny in Burgundy, France.

The abbey was founded only in 1972 originally in Switzerland but is a traditional Benedictine abbey in beautiful buildings in a setting that is equally beautiful, on a hilltop overlooking a breath-taking valley. The abbey can be best and most simply defined as a community of monks, some fifty of them, living according to the Rule of Saint Benedict in obedience to the Catholic hierarchy in the archdiocese of Dijon. The monks lead a full life as the Benedictines have done for centuries, singing the praise of God in the canonical hours and leading a life of simple but beautiful austerity. The running of retreats for laymen is an integral part of the abbey’s charism, a way the monks see of sharing the richness of the contemplative life.

The retreats themselves, perhaps unusually, are based on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius kept essentially the same and modified only in that the retreats last for five days rather than the four weeks that St Ignatius originally devised. Therefore, two monks alternately give conferences after which the retreatants meditate. One is encouraged to make a good confession and, indeed, a general confession of one’s life. But “encouragement” is a key word: everything is done by gentle encouragement; there is no harshness about the retreat. A certain amount of self-denial is encouraged, but this is all done most carefully and it is up to the individual to respond. The retreat creates a climate where one wants to do more for God and to be less selfish. The week is planned so that nothing is rushed.

Of course, there is Holy Mass every day and also the Holy Rosary, since the monastery has great devotion to Our Blessed Lady and its patron, St Joseph. The Abbey's liturgy is celebrated in Latin, with the exception of readings at Mass. The Solemn Mass in choir is sung each day with Gregorian Chant, usually according to the “ordinary form of the Roman rite” (Roman Missal of 1970), “ad orientem,” facing the Lord. Occasionally, it is celebrated using the “extraordinary form” (1962 Missal). Most of the private Masses — concelebration takes place only on Holy Thursday — are celebrated using the 1962 Missal. All is done with the greatest dignity to show the worship of God. Among the many blessings that the abbey brings to the Church is to be a model of how the new Mass can be properly celebrated and also how both the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Latin rite can blend in harmony.

One could consider the retreats to be like a spiritual health farm. Total silence among the retreatants is easily maintained and is, in fact, liberating. The monks are always gentle and at ease but do not insult the retreatants by expecting little of them.

Most of the retreats are French-speaking and are held at the abbey itself, but they are also held in different parts of France and Belgium. In the last three years demands from abroad have led the monks to concentrate on bringing the English-language retreats to other countries. The calendar for 2009 lists retreats in Ireland (Ards Friary, Co Donegal) from 6th to 11th July, in England (Cold Ash Retreat Centre near Newbury, Berkshire) from 26th 31st July, and in Australia (Capuchin Retreat Centre in Plumpton, NSW) from 3rd to 8th and 14th to 19th December. A modest donation is asked for but no one will be prevented from participating in a retreat for lack of finance.

As at such abbeys as Solesmes, individual reception in the guest house, with participation in the daily liturgy, (and the possibility of spiritual guidance) can be arranged at times when the abbey is not hosting the retreats. The retreats and stays in the guest house are for men only but ladies may visit parts of the abbey, attend the Masses and canonical singing in the beautiful chapel, and even ask one of the monks for spiritual guidance.

The little town of Flavigny sur Ozerain is worth visiting for its own sake as a beautiful and interesting fortified hill town, reminiscent of Italy. The film Chocolat, not worth seeing for itself, was filmed here and the scenery and background is the best thing about it.

One way to be in touch with the abbey is to take the monthly spiritual newsletter available in several languages which usually writes about a modern saint. The easiest way to find out more is to visit the abbey’s website.

Alternatively, one can write to Abbey of Saint Joseph de Clairval, 21150 Flavigny Sur Ozerain, France, from where one can receive the abbey’s newsletter.

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Brideshead: Read the Novel

The following article was originally published in the English periodical Catholic Life and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

"Read the novel; don’t see the film"

by Eric Hester

As well as being a Catholic headmaster for twenty-four years, Eric Hester was also a chief examiner in English Literature. This article is as lightly altered version of one published in a Catholic periodical a few years ago. Eric Hester writes that the new film version of Brideshead Revisited has not yet been released in England but he is disturbed by that he has read of it: “The film version seems to have abandoned the main theme of the book, “the operation of divine grace." At the end of the novel the central character has clearly become a Catholic and the novel ends optimistically. The film, apparently, has Ryder rejecting the Catholic faith. In the novel, the relationship between Charles Ryder and Sebastian is not a homosexual one but one of an intense friendship between two young men, not uncommon in those times in England and not unheard of even today; the film makes the relationship an explicitly homosexual one. I urge people not to see the new film but to read the book, which is arguably the greatest Catholic novel in English. The English television version of a few years ago is still obtainable on DVD; it is a faithful adaptation of the novel with some fine acting.


Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited is on anyone’s list of the great novels of the twentieth century. It has never been out-of-print since it appeared and it was made into a very successful television series with a most distinguished cast. Yet Catholicism is the main theme of the novel. As Waugh said of it: “Its theme – the operation of divine grace on a group of divers but closely connected characters – was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it.” He considered it his greatest achievement.

The novel opens its narrative chronologically later than its main events with the hero and narrator, Charles Ryder, in the British army in the Second World War. This prologue is deliberately gloomy and satirical. Ryder says of the camp in Scotland, “Here love had died between me and the army.” With the hopeless junior officer Hooper, he moves the men on the train to a different camp and then Ryder becomes aware of the new camp to which they have moved at night. Hooper says: “I’ve just had a snoop round. Very ornate, I’d call it. And a queer thing, there’s a sort of R.C. Church attached…You never saw such a thing.” Ryder replies in those famous words that still cause me to tingle: “Yes, Hooper, I did. I’ve been here before.”

Only then do we have the first real chapter as the flashback begins. It is still not the beginning chronologically. Brilliantly, Waugh gives us first Ryder’s original visit to Brideshead and only later his meeting Sebastian and then details of the boyhood of Ryder. The first-person narrative is used, in a way that only a genius can, to reveal, through the consciousness of Ryder, the events of the novel. Constantly, we are learning things from the past, given to us at the right time not in any simple order. It is perhaps the best constructed novel in the English language and I do not exempt the novels of Dickens, Jane Austen or Henry James. Indeed, of novels in other languages that I know, or which I have read in English translations, I can think only of Proust’s great novel as superior to it in construction.

Gradually we are introduced to the Marchmain family, whose Catholicism is central to their life. Does this aristocratic background render the novel difficult or rarefied? Not a bit. I have always found that it appeals to Catholics of all backgrounds not least to American Catholics. The family background enables Waugh to concentrate on his theme of “the operation of divine grace” in a way that a family like that portrayed, say, in some of the gloomy novels of D.H. Lawrence would not. Charles Ryder says to the girl Cordelia, “Does your family always talk about religion all the time?” and is told, “Not all the time. It’s a subject that just comes up naturally, doesn’t it?” Ryder says elsewhere, “Often, almost daily, since I had known Sebastian, some chance word in his conversation had reminded me that he was a Catholic but I took it as a foible, like his teddy-bear.”

The Oxford University chapters are still classics in their own right and the phrase “Brideshead set” is used for the group of people on whom Waugh is assumed to model some characters. The novel is, I believe, still read avidly by present-day undergraduates trying to glimpse what university life was once like. Of course, it is a fictitious portrayal of a jeunesse dorée. Waugh himself had had a good time at Oxford and we know from other writers such as John Betjeman, who like Waugh left without taking a degree, that the 1920s was a golden age of that carefree but energetic group. Waugh has Charles Ryder comment on education when he was swotting up for exams that he needed to pass to stay in his college: “I did (pass) after a week in which I forbade Sebastian my rooms and sat up to a late hour, with iced black coffee and charcoal biscuits, cramming myself with the neglected texts. I remember no syllable of them now, but the other more ancient lore which I acquired that term will be with me in one shape or another to my last hour.” Ryder (Waugh) says of Oxford and youth - “Oxford in those days was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s time; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days – such as that day – when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft air of centuries of youth.”

And one reason for the book’s remarkable success is surely its portrayal of youth. Waugh has Ryder exclaim: “The languor of Youth – how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections of Youth – all save this – come and go with us through life. Those things are part of life itself; but languor – the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding – that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.” Yet the novel itself is not particularly a young person’s book. Like the good wine that Waugh liked to imbibe, it becomes better with age, that is the age of the reader.

As with all Waugh’s novels, there is some glorious humour. My own favourite part is where Charles Ryder, then an impoverished art student in Paris, is being entertained by the materialistic Canadian member of the nouveaux riche, Rex Mottram. It is simply a meal described with the accompanying conversation but the ironic humour makes it memorable.

More famously, Brideshead has two great Catholic emotional scenes for which Waugh felt he should almost apologise in his 1959 Preface. “I have been in two minds as to the treatment of Julia’s outburst about mortal sin and Lord Marchmain’s dying soliloquy. These passages were never, of course, intended to report words actually spoken.” Well, I think they are both brilliant. The death of Lord Marchmain, I used to read as a young teacher in senior school assemblies and it always went down very well producing that absorbed air of total concentration which is, alas! rare at school assemblies. As I became an old head master I had to stop reading it because it made me embarrassingly lachrymose. Lord Marchmain, the sinner and very lapsed Catholic convert is dying. He refuses to see a priest but when he is literally on his death-bed his daughter brings the priest who anoints him and gives him conditional absolution, unconscious as the old man is. Waugh, in one of the great scenes of literature, describes what happens though the eyes of the sceptical Charles Ryder who is nevertheless moved to pray: “I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved who knelt in front of me praying, I knew for a sign…I prayed more simply; ‘God forgive him his sins’ and ‘Please God, make him accept your forgiveness.’ ” We the readers wait, too, for Lord Marchmain to make a sign of repentance and then Waugh, through Ryder carries on: “Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I though he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. ‘O God,’ I prayed, ‘don’t let him do that.’ But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.”

After that, Waugh with more genius, switches the final pages of the book back to the Second World War. We are never told directly that Charles Ryder has become a Catholic but we are left in no doubt that he has from such phrases as “I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words.” The novel finishes with a junior officer saying to Ryder, “You’re looking unusually cheerful today.”

Apart from all its other virtues, Brideshead would be a classic just for its style. If it as if Waugh were incapable of writing a cliché, or any kind of syntactical or grammatical infelicity. But that is only to express his negative qualities. Positively, he writes English that is a model for any prose writer: clear, precise, varied, appropriate and with every word used seeming at the same time to be both surprising and inevitable. Yet there is never any showing off of language, no virtuoso effects. All is beautifully ordered and controlled.

The television version can still be obtained on DVD. It is remarkably faithful and has impressing casting, with the two great actor knights of the Twentieth Century – Sir Laurence Olivier as Lord Marchmain and Sir John Gielgud as Charles Ryder’s father. Yet I beg people, as always, not to see the DVD until the novel has been read at least once. For you will want to read it again and again and have it around for dipping into. Those who like it can freely go on to all the other novels. The Sword of Honour trilogy is also set in the Second World War and there are those who regard it as even greater than Brideshead. It has been adapted for television twice, and for radio as well. A Handful of Dust is grimmer and has some similarity of theme, the unfaithful wife, for example. There are good lives of Waugh and his letters are published. The best introduction to the man, though, is his autobiographical novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.

Waugh was a celebrated and great convert. However, he became very upset by the changes brought about following, but not ordered by, the Second Vatican Council. Those who want to know about his sad last years can read about it in the book A Bitter Trial edited by Scott Reid and published by the St Austin Press. He died on Easter Sunday. One never knows what will happen on the day of judgment but let us hope that it carried some weight for him to be able to say that he had written the greatest English Catholic novel.

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