In AUGUST 1948, a 33-year-old Cistercian monk in Kentucky was bemused and delighted to receive a letter from Evelyn Waugh. “Dear Brother Louis”, it began, “My criticisms were really personal … I didn’t like your criticisms of the Franciscans. God knows I have no business to lecture other people about charity but I expect a higher standard from [a] professed Religious than from myself.” Not a good start, one might think, to a friendship. But that is what ensued, albeit a sporadic and mostly postal one. By “personal” here, Waugh seems to have meant “subjective”, and by “really”, “in fact”. This book pairs the two sides of an extraordinary correspondence, linking it with biographical narrative. Much of the l