The Catholics: The Church and its People in Britain and Ireland, from the Reformation to the Present Day
ROY HATTERSLEY

Towards the end of 1931, n Nottingham, 25-year-old Fr Frederick Hattersley ­undertook to prepare a young woman, Enid, for her marriage to a collier. The course of instruction over, he conducted the wedding ceremony. Ten days later Enid and Frederick eloped. Their son Roy knew nothing of this until, after his father’s death in 1973, he opened a letter of condolence from Bishop William Ellis. Ellis had been in the seminary with Frederick, and had fond memories of him. It had never occurred to him to wonder why his father, “a lowly civil servant”, could translate Latin inscriptions on tombstones. He has ­dedicated this book to his father’s memory.

It is not, however, just an act of homage. “Religion in general”, says Hattersley, “the belief in the unbelievable – fascinates me,” and to prove the point he cites his biographies of John Wesley and William Booth. Catholicism fits the pattern because it deals in certainties, and that makes it attractive to many. The conviction that the strength of Catholicism lies in its unbending certainty underlies the text, and is explicitly mentioned on the final page, with the warning that “the ancient verities have been eroded by a new certainty” – the notion of freedom – and with that new certainty, Hattersley suggests, the Church is struggling to cope.

Hattersley arrives at this conclusion after a fluent and readable account of the Catholic history of Britain since the Reformation. It is a brave undertaking.