Michael Duggan, Author at Catholic Herald

Michael Duggan

February 02, 2017

The History of England: Revolution by Peter Ackroyd, Macmillan, £25 The fourth volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England lands with a 400-page thud and a narrative stretching from the crowning of William III to the Battle of Waterloo. To some extent, this is the tale of the Glorious Revolution and its discontents. Ackroyd is

The Catholic writer that the 21st century forgot

January 19, 2017

Bruce Marshall, who died 30 years ago this year, is the forgotten man of 20th-century Catholic letters. The Scottish convert and prolific novelist is nowhere to be found in respected surveys by Ian Ker, Fr Charles Connor and Ralph McInerny, or even in Joseph Pearce’s prodigious Literary Converts. This could be because the critics have

Magical Christmas music from a witty hedonist

December 22, 2016

At some point in the coming days, buffeted by the frenzy and bombast of a 21st-century Christmas, you may have the urge (and perhaps just a sliver of time) to re-enter the meaning and spirit of the season through a different, purer door. But how to achieve this? Well, think of setting 10 or so

The world’s last great letter-writer

December 02, 2016

Dashing for the Post: the Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor Edited by Adam Sisman, John Murray, £30 The age of letter-writing is over. Few now enjoy or endure what Patrick Leigh Fermor calls “the agony of waiting for letters, and, when they arrive, the sudden bomb-like detonation of delight”. “Paddy” lived a seemingly charmed life

How saints brought freedom to Britain

October 27, 2016

Good Things of Good Men by Sharon Jennings, Oremus, £9.99 The Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine is the first of the side chapels that visitors and worshippers come to when they enter Westminster Cathedral via the great door, and head down the right-hand side of the nave, passing the baptistry with, just outside

What comes after the ‘reform of the reform’?

October 20, 2016

Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century edited by Alcuin Reid, Oremus, £16.99 ‘The reform of the reform” – in other contexts the phrase could have an absurd ring to it, the sound of thinkers disappearing down a plughole of their own making. But when it comes to the liturgy, the stakes are genuinely high. The Second

A concise, trenchant defence of Protestantism

October 13, 2016

Why the Reformation Still Matters by Michael Reeves and Tim Chester, Inter-Varsity Press, £9.99 Who is this book for? Not Catholics, it seems. Michael Reeves and Tim Chester are out to fortify fellow Protestants in their historical convictions: the Reformation “is our story. If you are Anglican, Baptist, Brethren, Congregational, Independent, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian,

How America’s progressives unleashed ‘moral chaos’

September 22, 2016

Book review: A shocking cultural collapse has occurred among America's poor. RR Reno points the way to renewal

How America’s progressives unleashed ‘moral chaos’

September 22, 2016

Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society by RR Reno, Regnery Faith, £21 I groan a little when I read an opening sentence like: “Our country is entering a crisis.” There is always someone, it seems, who thinks their age is an age of great, unprecedented crisis. But hold on. I shouldn’t be so smug.

Five Catholic brothers go charting the Empire

August 25, 2016

Mapping the Past by Charles Drazin, William Heinemann, £20 Charles Drazin’s Mapping the Past begins on a melancholy note that never quite departs from the rest of the book. On the first page, his mother is told that no more can be done to treat her cancer. Out of the blue, she expresses a fervent,

Lies, myths and patent frauds

August 25, 2016

They all laughed at Columbus when he said the world was round, They all laughed when Edison recorded sound. Ira Gershwin Professor Rodney Stark grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, in the 1930s and 1940s. He was, in his own words, “an American Protestant with intellectual pretensions”. Every October 12 – Columbus Day – he

Why Catholics make great football managers

August 11, 2016

Four of the last five Premier League champions have had Catholic bosses. Surely this can’t be a coincidence

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