The death of Paul Johnson, the author, journalist, historian and editor is a loss not just to British letters and journalism and London social life, but to the Catholic Church. Throughout the vagaries of his long and varied career, his Catholicism was a constant, and he loved the Church, all the more because it is a Church of sinners where human faults and failings are forgiven. He went to school at Stonyhurst (the focus of this month’s architecture pages) and his Jesuit formation was evident in his intellectual clarity. His Requiem Mass, at the Church of St Mary of the Angels in Bayswater, London, was remarkable for the presence of former prime ministers, politicians, editors and journalists, but it was the man of faith that the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard saluted in his eulogy. Johnson cherished his friends, and he had many of them.
He was enormously prolific as a writer and journalist, and wrote over 50 books. With his intellectual honesty he was capable of change, particularly in politics, for he gravitated from being editor of the left-wing New Statesman to becoming one of the most prominent conservative thinkers in the UK. His output was prodigious; among his works, his history of the Jewish people and of the American people are especially notable: he was outspoken in his affection and admiration for both. But he also wrote The Quest for God, in which he declared that he prayed to Jane Austen as well as to conventional saints, in the belief that she is in heaven.
He had his undeniable faults, of which irascibility was just one, but he was also exemplary in his hard work (few people could write so quickly and eloquently), his diligence (the reading undertaken for his work and his range of reference was remarkable); his loyalty to his friends and his devotion to his children and grandchildren. His son Daniel is a prominent Catholic journalist (and writes in this edition). He was a Defender of the Faith; there are few of his calibre now.
At his funeral, the opening hymn was, unexpectedly, “To Be a Pilgrim”, the words for which are based on John Bunyan, the anti-Catholic Puritan. It might seem a curious choice until we consider the words: “Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit/ He knows he at the end shall life inherit”. That summed Paul Johnson up: may it be so for him.
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