Decline and ascent

As a rule I decline to review books by old friends: it puts either one’s integrity or the friendship at risk. I make an exception of Father Joe because I first read it six months ago, prior to its publication in New York and, while not as overwhelmed as many American reviewers — Andrew Sullivan in the New York Times Book Review placed it in ‘the first tier of spiritual memoirs ever written’ — I did find it an exceptional book that merits its success in the United States.

Tony Hendra is the son of an English stained-glass artist from a working-class background, and a mother of Irish — though she liked to pretend it was Scottish — extraction. He was raised as a Catholic and at the age of 14 was almost seduced by a married woman in the parish. The husband, after catching them in flagrante delicto, took Hendra for a spiritual dressing down to a Benedictine monk, Dom Joseph Warrilow, at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight.