Catholic or Nothing

Catholic or Nothing

Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century By Melanie McDonagh. Yale University Press, 2026. Hardcover, 354 pages, $38. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In September 2025, King Charles III visited the Birmingham Oratory to...
Reviving the Vanished Voice of a Maker

Reviving the Vanished Voice of a Maker

The Worlds of Dorothy L. Sayers: The Life and Works of the Crime Writer and Poet By Stephen Wade. Pen & Sword History, 2025. Hardcover, 256 pages, $39.95/£25.00. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In 2011, A. N. Wilson numbered Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) among authors...
Fundamentally Religious and Catholic

Fundamentally Religious and Catholic

Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography by Holly Ordway. Word on Fire Academic, 2023. Hardcover, 532 pages, $ 34.95. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. J. R. R. Tolkien famously described The Lord of the Rings as a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work.”...
These Roman Things

These Roman Things

David Jones and Rome: Reimagining the Decline of Western Civilization by Jasmine Hunter Evans. Oxford University Press, 2022. Hardcover, 432 pages, $115. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz. In 1964, poet-painter David Jones lamented changes underway in the Roman Catholic...
A Singular Universal

A Singular Universal

The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene by Richard Greene. W. W. Norton, 2021. Hardcover, xvi + 591 pp., $40. Reviewed by Adam Schwartz Jean-Paul Sartre once classified Gustave Flaubert as a “singular universal.” For Sartre, such a writer’s oeuvre becomes a...