Let Dons Delight Being Variations on a Theme in an Oxford Common-room

by Ronald Knox

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Genres: Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was a Roman Catholic priest, theologian, author of detective stories, as well as a writer and a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio.

Knox had attended Eton College and won several scholarships at Balliol College, Oxford. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1912 and was appointed chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, but he left in 1917 upon his conversion to Catholicism. In 1918 he was ordained a Catholic priest. Knox wrote many books of essays and novels. Directed by his religious superiors, he re-translated the Latin Vulgate Bible into English, using Hebrew and Greek sources, beginning in 1936.

He died on 24 August 1957 and his body was brought to Westminster Cathedral. Bishop Craven celebrated the requiem mass, at which Father Martin D'Arcy, a Jesuit, preached the panegyric. Knox was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew's Church, Mells.

Reviews

[Mick Maurer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting fiction. Need to have Google on hand to search some of the subjects covered.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whimsical, published just before the war. The narrator (Knox?) has been invited to an Oxford college for the evening, which ends up in the college's smoking room (formerly the senior common room). The year is 1938. He falls asleep (or does he? his sleep apparently lasts only a quarter of an hour, according to witnesses) and he sees and hears, but cannot take part in, conversations which have taken place in the same room in similar circumstances at 50-year intervals, beginning in 1588. Each one touches on history, politics, religion, philosophy, and in the later ones, education and the role of Oxford. It's a bit dry in places but it's an interesting idea, and conveys the sense of continuity in an ancient place. Even in 1938, when he is awake, he doesn't seem able to get a word in edgeways, so he is still an observer. It's an interesting idea, and the structure provides the framework for snapshots of history at interesting moments (finishing in the real world with war about to break out).

[Pater Edmund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Belloc says of this book that in it Knox fulfilled the promise of his youth, and I have to agree. Brilliant.

[Magda]

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.390150...