Evelyn Waugh presented his biography of St.
Edmund Campion, the Elizabethan poet, scholar and gentleman who became the haunted, trapped and murdered priest as a simple, perfectly true story of heroism and holiness.
But it is written with a novelist's eye for the telling incident and with all the elegance and feeling of a master of English prose.
From the years of success as an Oxford scholar, to entry into the newly founded Society of Jesus and a professorship in Prague, Campion's life was an inexorable progress towards the doomed mission to England.
There followed pursuit, betrayal, a spirited defense of loyalty to the Queen, and a horrifying martyr's death at Tyburn.
Ignatius Press Edmund campion, paperback/evelyn waugh
