SPIRITED THINKING SINCE 1888
Charlie Hegarty

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Scrooge, Nietzsche and the genius of St Paul
March 08, 2018
Praying with Saint Paul Edited by Fr Peter John Cameron OP, Magnificat, 384pp, £10 Fr Cameron has written a most personal, heartfelt foreword to this collection of short essays on St Paul. While studying for the priesthood he realised that “this was a man I needed to get to know better”. Indeed, he admits, “I
Catholics should stop being ‘nice’
January 11, 2018
The Vortex by Michael Voris, St Michael’s Media, £20 Michael Voris began his broadcasting apostolate in 2008, four years after returning to the Church after many years’ lapsation. The Vortex, regular short broadcasts on the state of the Church today, has generated controversy for pulling no punches in its treatment of abuses and its insistence
Joined by nature, tortured by the state
November 16, 2017
The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep by Juliet Butler, Fourth Estate, £12.99 The Russian adage that provides the title to this book is an ironic reference to its contents: the story of Maria and Daria Krivoshlyapova (known as Dasha and Masha), conjoined twins who were born in Russia in 1950 and died in
The naïve Briton who exposed Nazism
November 09, 2017
Darkness Over Germany by E Amy Buller, Arcadia Books, £15 First published in 1943, this series of conversations and reflections sheds a fascinating light on Germany in the 1930s. Its British author, a scholar of German, High Anglican and member of the Student Christian Movement, had been organising Anglo-German discussion groups and exchanges from 1935
Meeting the survivors of a nuclear holocaust
September 21, 2017
Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard, Souvenir Press, £15 This important book should be read by everyone who has followed the recent war of words between President Trump and North Korea. The latter, which possesses all the characteristics of a rogue state, understands too well that its claim on world interest lies in
From ‘medicine man’ to mass murderer
September 07, 2017
Hitler’s Monsters by Eric Kurlander, Yale, £25 Eric Kurlander has written a compelling, comprehensive study of the role the occult, in all its forms, played during the rise of the Nazi Party and the duration of the Third Reich. The story is as appalling as it is incredible: how could an advanced technological Western country
Wisdom, humour and sly irreverence
August 10, 2017
Father Brown and the Ten Commandments by GK Chesterton, Ignatius Press, £13 Never having read any of Chesterton’s Father Brown stories before, I found this book a treat. Usually my holiday reading list includes a Simenon novel – this year it has been spent in the company of a small, tubby figure in black, with
Memoir of a rabbi who barely mentions God
June 22, 2017
Confessions of a Rabbi by Jonathan Romain, Biteback, £12.99 The author, a well-known broadcaster and rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue, has written a sympathetic and humorous account of life among his 800 households, with the odd problems he encounters in his role. He sounds unfazed by them and offers generally sensible advice, taking the view (as
The American ideas the Nazis borrowed
June 01, 2017
Hitler’s American Model by James Q Whitman, Princeton, £19.95 You wonder what this book is about until you read the subtitle: “The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law”. We forget recent history – that the US has not just been the home of “liberty and democracy”, but also of its own brand
Faith, whiskey and bad weather
May 25, 2017
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! By Chilton Williamson Jr, Chronicle, £20 If you are a Catholic novelist writing today, how do you suggest a world where faith matters, without being self-conscious or appearing to proselytise? This is the question all Catholic writers must ask themselves. You can’t set aside your faith for the sake of fiction, yet you
The Gulag’s horrors from the other side
April 27, 2017
The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard by Ivan Chistyakov, Granta, £14.99 The value of this diary lies in the fact that although there are numerous memoirs of Gulag prisoners, this is a rare first-person testimony of a guard. The author, an educated Muscovite, was conscripted into the interior prison administration and sent to work
How a pizza empire changed the Church
March 30, 2017
Monaghan by Joseph Pearce, Tan Books, £23 Before I read this biography I would not have thought that the life of the man who built the Domino’s Pizza empire would have merited much attention. I was wrong. Tom Monaghan, the subject of Joseph Pearce’s intriguing new book, shows what is possible when a man starts
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