This biography of the English saint and martyr Edmund Campion won the Hawthornden Prize in 1936, and I read it because of that. It is very well-written , tho it lacks a bibliography and footnotes. Campion was executed 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 head to be cut off and your body divided into four parts." It surely makes one grateful for the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishmnet. This is a fast read and eminently worth reading.

I first read this book after having exited the anguish of a doubting Christianity into the calm of a composed agnosticism 40 years ago.

I return to this book again and again and probably re-read it every 3-4 years. Never missing an opportunity to recommend it.

It reads like a thriller. The story unfolds inexorably to its inevitable climax, from the scholarly peace of Oxford where Campion was a foremost scholar of genius in the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, to its ultimately savage and bloody end on the gallows at Tyburn.

The story could be seen by some as one of undoubting faith. By others, perhaps, as a story of a scholar obligated by an absolute intellectual integrity and then driven helplessly, to his destiny, by an academically remorseless logic after his conclusion of the fallibilities of the reformation.

Whichever view one takes Campion was a hero in voice and in deed. His life was a poem. His writings those of genius - his ringing words still echo.

Evelyn Waugh, a convert himself, tells a story as good as any fiction but far more compelling and sobering because of the true biography that it is.

If there is a fault to this book, it is that it is too short. Waugh writes this work of history as one would a novel. However, there is plenty of historical detail. Nonetheless, in an effort to make the book more readable, Waugh has left out the footnotes and endnotes.

That being said, it is probably the best book we presently have on St. Edmund Campion. Edmund Campion was well known amongst Elizabethan circles, including Queen Elizabeth herself. He was lauded for his intelligence and wit and no one could match him in debate.

Edmund gave up what looked like a promising career in academics to become a Catholic. He studied at the College at Douai and became a Jesuit. However, at this time, it was like trading one acadamic pursuit for another.

Edmund was doing quite well at a professorship in Prague when he was called to go to England to minister to the Catholics who had not forgotten their faith. He was not sent as a spy but as a minister to the faithful.

This Edmund did. He did it so well, traveling about in disguise, that he eluded capture for some time. In the end, Edmund comes to a martyr's death (I leave it to Waugh to explain the details).

I judge a book, mainly, on whether I have attained anything good from its contents. Waugh's telling of the story of Edmund Campion has moved me. St. Edmund Campion died as did Christ, asking the forgiveness the very men who were to so cruelly slay him in front of a jeering public.

I'm very pleased I was able to find a copy of this book for my library. Most importantly, I'm very happy that I was able to learn something about this great saint. Your effort to do the same will be well worth it.

Waugh's details of Campion's European whereabouts gets a bit tedious but once Campion returns to England you can't put the book down. Waugh leaves you thinking which queen rightfully deserves the adjective Bloody.

St. Edmund Campion: Scholar, Historian, Orator, Actor, Playwrite, Director, Jesuit, Confessor, Martyr, and Saint. A biographic play about this extraordinary man should include all these, but unfortunately Buckley and MacGuire's play is clogged with far too many scenes, and far too many of them are too brief for us to get to know the great soul of the saint. The play is enormously well researched, and one can definitely learn something by reading this piece, yet in an artistic sense this play quite obviously borrows matieral from Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons." While I am glad to see at least an attempt to bring themes of religion and sacrifice into the modern theatre, Edmund Campion's story more likely is suited for an epic screen story than it is for the confines of a full-length play.

Buckley and MacGuire provide an excellent and very well reseached piece about Campion.