If a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing badly. This paradoxical witticism of Chesterton was on my mind as I sat down to watch The War of the Vendée, a new film about the forgotten martyrs of the French Revolution. I was pleased that a film had been made to honour the … Read more
It was March 1936. A series of anti-clerical riots swept through Toledo. Churches were burnt and priests and monks were attacked in the streets. During these disturbances, several Carmelite monks, disguised in lay clothes, sought shelter in the home of the British poet, Roy Campbell, who had moved to the city with his wife, Mary, … Read more
I’m currently in the midst of watching Sir Kenneth Clark’s celebrated Civilisation, first broadcast by the BBC in 1969 and subsequently by PBS. I had heard so much about it, and remember watching it as a child, and was looking forward to having a guided tour of Western Civilisation by one of its most outspoken … Read more
Almost five hundred years after his death, William Shakespeare remains one of the most important figures in human history. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Homer and Dante, he is part of the triumvirate of literary giants who straddle the centuries as permanent witnesses of the permanent things. It is, therefore, gratifying that modern scholarship is … Read more
Imagine one body with two heads. The twin giants of the Catholic literary revival of the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, were so much associated in the eyes of the reading public that they together became the butt of the caricaturist’s humor and the satirist’s wit. Most famously, George Bernard Shaw, in … Read more
Imagine one body with two heads. The twin giants of the Catholic literary revival of the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, were so much associated in the eyes of the reading public that they together became the butt of the caricaturist’s humor and the satirist’s wit. Most famously, George Bernard Shaw, in … Read more