Bonnie Thurston has always been drawn to those who have pitched their tent outside church walls – early Christian widows, John the Baptist, Celtic saints, Charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton – the “desert people”, as she calls them.

BONNIE THURSTON has always been drawn to those who have pitched their tent outside church walls – early Christian widows, John the Baptist, Celtic saints, Charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton – the “desert people”, as she calls them. The former professor (“I ran screaming from academe” she tells us) is something of a wandering scholar herself. She “trolled university and especially monastic libraries in three continents for 20 years ferreting out material” for her latest book, a thrilling hybrid of poetry and scholarship, Saint Mary of Egypt: A Modern Verse Life and Interpretation (published by Cistercian Publications in association with Liturgical Press).

Thurston tells us she “met” Mary of Egypt many years ago when she read Harlots of the Desert by Benedicta Ward SLG (“a beautiful writer and absolutely the best on early monasticism and early English Christian history”). Mary’s is an often-told story in church literature and she is particularly venerated by Orthodox Christians. John Tavener composed an opera devoted to her, with Mother Thekla providing the libretto.

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