Welcome to the new, revamped St. Austin Review website! As of today, I will be checking the website regularly, and writing for it frequently. I’m pleased to say that I will be joined by a small team of colleagues who will also be writing regularly for the site. Please check this space daily to be sure that you are missing nothing!

As subscribers to StAR will know already, the magazine’s mission is to evangelize the culture through the power of culture. This is a personal passion of mine, largely due to the fact that I was brought to the Catholic Faith through the power of Catholic culture and what might be called cultural apologetics. I believe that the riches of Catholic art, music and literature can bring people to the Faith through the power of goodness, truth and beauty. What a wealth of treasures we have at our disposal: Giotto, Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico; Gregorian chant, polyphony, and the works of Bach, Mozart, Mahler, Bruckner, Pärt; Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare. Et cetera …

And speaking of Shakespeare, I am heading to EWTN this weekend to film a thirteen-part series on the evidence of Shakespeare’s Catholicism to be gleaned from the deepest level of meaning in his plays. This is a follow-up series to the thirteen-part series I filmed last year which looks at the biographical evidence for the Bard’s Catholicism. This first series, which is entitled “The Quest for Shakespeare”, is due to be broadcast this March. See the EWTN schedule for more details. During my two weeks’ sojourn at EWTN we will also be filming an hour-long Tolkien special, which is exciting, and I will be appearing live on Father Pacwa’s show next Wednesday evening.

So much for the latest news. Watch this space for more …