Edmund Campion

Short biography - it doesn't claim to be a scholarly work, and in any case the contemporary sources are relatively few - of the favoured Oxford academic who turned Catholic, became a Jesuit and on returning to England was duly martyred - as he expected. Waugh wrote this book in the first flush of his own conversion to Catholicism, and he makes no pretence to be neutral. But despite that, it's balanced and sets out the context well; as one would expect with Waugh the use of language is excellent. Interesting too as a forerunner of his great treatment of Catholic themes in Brideshead Revisited ( )

Biography, Tudor, Evelyn Waugh ( )

I thought this book was great. It's not presented as a scholarly work, but rather a more informal account of the life of Edmund Campion, an English Jesuit priest who was hanged, drawn & quartered under the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The book also gives a little background on the Reformation, especially its effects in England, and events in the wider world. My one word of caution about this book is that it has a marked pro-Catholic bias. Edmund Campion is considered a saint by the Catholic Church, and Waugh wrote the book after he converted to Catholicism, so that's to be expected. But if you won't be offended by that, I definitely think it's worth a read.

3629. Edmund Campion, by Evelyn Waugh (read Sept 16 2002) I read this because it won the Hawthornden Prize (a prize awarded annually to an English writer "for the best work of imaginative literature") in 1936, bringing to 8 the number of Hawthornden winning books I've read, and all 8 have been worthwhile. This book tells in unpretentious but vivid style the life of St. Edmund Campion, killed on Dec 1, 1581, after being sentenced to "be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight then your heade to be cut off and your body divided into four parts." Thank God for the Eighth Amendment, eh? A well worth reading book. ( )