Edmund Campion and Waugh's 'Household of the Faith'

Evelyn Waugh began his life of Edmund Campion as an act of gratitude to Martin D’Arcy, SJ. The book, which he wrote in six months, won the Hawthornden prize two days before the opening of the new Campion Hall on 26 June 1936. His 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, and led to that study of ‘the same pure light shining in the darkness, uncomprehended’, 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 is a hybrid event with Professor Kilroy addressing a small audience in Oxford. We invite you to join us online.