Alexander Faludy, Author at Catholic Herald

Alexander Faludy

New book on Venice could say more on religion’s role in the ‘impossible’ city

April 06, 2024

Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City Denis Romano Oxford University Press, £31.99, 904 pages The Renaissance scholar Francesco Sansovino (1521-1586) called Venice, and its watery setting, “the impossible in the impossible”. Situated in a tidal lagoon and built largely on artificial islands, the sheer improbability of magnificent churches and shimmering palaces emerging from

The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce and Crisis, by Richard Whatmore

November 01, 2023

How liberalism first failed. The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce and Crisis Richard Whatmore Allen Lane, £30, 480 pages It is sometimes said that moral philosophers spent the 19th century grappling with the French Revolution (or rather the following Terreur) much as their 20th-century successors did with the Third Reich. That is not to relativise

Traditionalism: Timely history of trendy movement

September 01, 2023

Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order by Mark Sedgwick Pelican, £25, 432 pages Traditionalism has lately been used, confusingly, to label phenomena as diverse as the geopolitics of (alleged) Putin guru Aleksandr Dugin, the psychology of Jordan Peterson and King Charles III’s views on architecture and the environment. Mark Sedgwick’s new book does

Henry III: A forgotten king

June 03, 2023

Henry III: Reform, Rebellion and Civil War 1258-1272 David Carpenter Yale University Press, £25, 576 pages Henry III (1207-1272) was, at 56 years, England’s longest reigning Catholic monarch, and (after Edward the Confessor) its most devout. His tenure bequeathed us Westminster Abbey as we know it, parliament in a recognisable form and the beginnings of

Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History, by Philip C Almond

April 01, 2023

Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History Philip C Almond Cambridge University Press, £30, 386 pages ‘Will the real Mary Magdalene please stand up?” That question might be said to underlie Philip Almond’s new reception history of one of the New Testament’s most represented, and most contested, figures. At the heart of Mary’s story lies a paradox.

I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus, by David Lloyd Dusenbury

February 01, 2023

I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus David Lloyd Dusenbury Hurst and Co, £25, 312 pages The “Political Jesus” of 1970s Liberation Theology (who presents as an anti-colonial activist and proto Utopian-socialist) rests on shaky historical ground. Nevertheless in this book David Lloyd Dusenbury argues that Jesus’s life, death and teaching were “political”

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