Richard Rex

Peter Ackroyd is a major figure in contemporary English letters, a fluent and pleasing writer with dozens of fascinating books to his name in numerous genres—history, biography, chorography, criticism, and fiction. So the prospect of his reflections on the long history of Christian England is . . . . Continue Reading »

In 1489 the Roman Catholic Church felt, and was, hemmed into a corner of the world. The view from Rome was of Africa and Asia long lost to heretical churches or to Islam, and Europe divided between Catholicism and Orthodoxy (itself seen as heretical), while Ottoman power advanced relentlessly up the . . . . Continue Reading »

The closure of the eight hundred or so religious houses of medieval England and Wales by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1540 is now one of the set pieces of English history. The “Dissolution of the Monasteries” has become as well known as the Norman Conquest, the Spanish Armada, or the Glorious . . . . Continue Reading »

Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, as it was once known, is a hundred years old and has just been awarded the accolade of a magnificent centenary edition in a superb, fresh English translation. This lavishly illustrated volume marvelously enhances the reader’s encounter with a . . . . Continue Reading »

The Mirror and the Light by hilary mantel henry holt, 784 pages, $30 The arrival of this final installment of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy, penned by “one of our most important living writers,” has precipitated an avalanche of adulation for its author and her great work, already decorated with . . . . Continue Reading »

Walter Scott once observed that although astrology, which had enjoyed almost universal credit in the middle of the seventeenth century, had become an object of ridicule by the beginning of the eighteenth, it still retained a number of devotees, even among the learned: Grave and studious men were . . . . Continue Reading »

Jeeves and the King of Clubs:  A Novel in Homage to P.G. Wodehouse by ben schott little, brown, 320 pages, $27 Jeeves and the Wedding Bells:  An Homage to P.G. Wodehouse by sebastian faulks st. martin’s, 256 pages, $25.99 Aunts, Comrades, Gentlemen . . . According to Hilaire Belloc, . . . . Continue Reading »

Thomas Cromwell:  A Revolutionary Life by diarmaid macculloch viking, 752 pages, $40 They said it could not be done. At least Sir Geoffrey Elton, to whose memory his former doctoral student has dedicated this book, said it could not be done. According to him, as Diarmaid MacCulloch reminds us, . . . . Continue Reading »

Enlightenment Now:  The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by steven pinker  viking, 576 pages, $35 Steven Pinker, as his blurb reminds us, has been reckoned by Time magazine among the “hundred most influential people in the world today.” In Enlightenment Now he devotes . . . . Continue Reading »

To Change the Church:  Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism by ross douthat simon and schuster, 256 pages, $26 It is beyond question that the Roman Catholic Church is currently in the throes of one of the greatest crises in its two-millennium history. In human terms, its future might be . . . . Continue Reading »