It is twenty-five years since the death of Malcolm Muggeridge, and twenty since Gregory Wolfe’s excellent biography of him. Muggeridge (1903-1990) was a famous journalist, and like all such, he has faded like last year’s newspapers. (Pop quiz: Who were Walter Lippmann and H. V. Kaltenborn?) Part of Muggeridge’s fame came from converting to Christianity in [...]
“What the Church thought or thinks is its own affair,” wrote Henry Adams, “and what it chooses to call orthodox is orthodox.” Adams (1838-1918) was the grandson and great-grandson of American presidents, and he was one of many people who have been fascinated by Catholic culture but have not been inclined to convert to Catholicism. His [...]
In Plato’s Apology, Socrates says that in his search for wisdom he consulted poets. If today someone were on a Socratic quest for wisdom, seeking out poets might not be on that person’s list. For the average person these days, poetry tends to mean something syrupy inside a greeting card, hardly to be taken seriously when [...]
Scholars seem to agree that the only sonnet by William Shakespeare with a religious theme is Sonnet 146. It is the only poem by Shakespeare in the original Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1940), as well as in The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse (1981). R. S. Thomas included it in The Penguin Book of [...]
“What a miserable little snob Henry James is,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt to a friend in June of 1894. Roosevelt had just read James’ short story “The Death of the Lion” in the April issue of a new periodical called The Yellow Book. “His polished, pointless, uninteresting stories,” Roosevelt continued, “about the upper social classes of England [...]
Joe Queenan, writing “In Praise of Libraries” in the March, 2015, issue of The Rotarian, described public libraries as places of adventure and serendipity, where through books someone can discover new people, places, and things. Some libraries, though, also take one into unexpected areas by means of old movies, and sometimes even through old-time radio shows. [...]
Some actors seem to define a role for all time, so that few people can imagine Thomas More as anyone but Paul Scofield or T. E Lawrence as anyone other than Peter O’Toole. So, too, Allan Quatermain will always be Stewart Granger, tall and handsome and clean-shaven. However, Quatermain is much the opposite, bearded and described, [...]
In Conservatism (1956) Peter Viereck noted that British thinkers tend to see conservatism as “an inarticulate state of mind.” He explained, “The liberal and rationalist mind consciously articulates abstract blueprints; the conservative mind unconsciously incarnates concrete traditions.” Although Viereck did not cite him, Stanley Baldwin summed up this view by saying, “I would rather trust a [...]
It seems more and more people are living to be a hundred, and if he were alive, Thomas Merton would this year be among them. Merton (1915-1968) remains the most famous Christian monk of the twentieth century, and his writings will engage scholars and others for some time to come. His fame began in 1948, when [...]
Sixty-five years ago premiered The Consul, an English-language opera in three acts. It won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1950, enhancing the growing reputation of its young composer and librettist, Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007). A performance for television in 1960 is available on DVD. That version recreated the original production, and Patricia Neway brilliantly reprised [...]
