One of our own is dying. Stratford Caldecott – and his wife Leonie – have been with us since the beginning: since our first editorial meeting; since the idea of StAR was taking definitive shape as a nascent journal; and as friends of ours before StAR was anything at all.
Strat is a man of rare kindness, much wisdom, and unusual knowledge; he is also perhaps the fairest-minded intellectual I have ever known, in or out of the Church; and his untimely departure is to me like the prospect of Elrond disappearing from Middle Earth.
One of several things we have in common is an enjoyment of classic comics, and the last time we met the conversation took a long and delightful detour through Kirby and Ditko country. He wrote us a piece on the virtues of comic books for our Popular Culture issue back in 2007, and here is a recent one for the Imaginative Conservative:
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/10/technology-imaginative-film.html
His daughter Sophie organised an online Marvel Comics-related campaign to promote prostate cancer awareness and simultaneously cheer her dad up. It has gone viral, and you can follow the story here:
http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/marvels-avengers-assemble-for-catholic.html
and, more fully, here:
http://sophiecaldecott.wordpress.com/
In addition to co-founding and editing a superlative journal of faith and culture – Second Spring (http://www.secondspring.co.uk/) – Stratford has written singularly beautiful books whose beauty is multiplex: the subjects, the author’s thought, his prose. I urge you to discover them while he is still with us:
On Tolkien:
The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision behind the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit (identified by Peter Kreeft as the most essential book on Tolkien):
On Mystical Theology:
All Things Made New: The Mysteries of the World in Christ:
The Seven Sacraments:
On Catholic Cosmology:
The Radiance of Being:
On Education:
Beauty in the World: Rethinking the Foundations of Education:
Beauty for Truth’s Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education:
Catholic Social Teaching:
Not As the World Gives: The Way of Creative Justice:
It is one of the many regrets I have of living abroad that I have seen so little of Stratford and his family over the last ten years; and now that he is about to leave, there are so many things I should like to ask him, so much good talk left unspoken. Au revoir, my friend! Till we meet again.
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