Evelyn Waugh began his life of Edmund Campion as an act of gratitude to Jesuit priest, Martin D’Arcy, who was one of England's foremost Catholic intellectuals. The book, which he wrote in six months, won the Hawthornden Prize two days before the opening of the new Campion Hall on 26th June 1936.
Waugh's encounters with the horrors of communism in Mexico in 1939 and Croatia in 1944 transformed his understanding of Campion’s martyrdom, which he came to see as part of ‘an unending war’ between state and church.
Later, ‘the same pure light shining in the darkness, uncomprehended’, was to be found in Brideshead Revisited, whose original title, ‘A Household of the Faith: a Theological Novel’, echoed Campion’s scaffold utterance, and perhaps best expressed his own view of Campion Hall.
This talk will be given on 9th September 2021 by Professor Gerard Kilroy, Senior Research Fellow in English at Campion Hall.
To register, please click here.
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