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Reading lists

5 Catholic-inspired books

The Story of a Family and a Nation

The Devonshires

The story of the Devonshires is the story of Britain.

A vivid read, crowded with characters and colour

Jostling with the eccentric and engaging characters from a grand family, Hattersley deftly tells a jaunty story about Britishness through the ages

A seriously comfortable armchair, a magnificent old duffer of a book that deftly knits together a national story into the fabric of a family drama. It does this with all the warmth and affection for history that mark out a former statesman and a first-class storyteller

A balanced look at a traditional tale of aristocratic power and prestige

This jaunty magnificent book tells the history of Britain just as much as it does of one family

Remarkable… The genius of this work is that it serves up a feast of details from a whole dynasty of remarkable men and women

An engaging account of a gallery of historical figures

A delightful, beautifully researched book

Roy Hattersley was elected to Parliament in 1964. He served in Harold Wilson’s government and in Jim Callaghan’s Cabinet. In 1983 he became deputy leader of the Labour Party. As well as contributing to a host of national newspapers, he has written twenty-two books, including The Edwardians; Borrowed Time: the story of Britain between the wars; and In Search of England as well as much acclaimed biographies of John Wesley and, most recently, Lloyd George. Roy Hattersley has been Visiting Fellow of Harvard’s Institute of Politics and of Nuffield College, Oxford. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

William Cavendish, the father of the first Earl, dissolved monasteries for Henry VIII. Bess, his second wife, was gaoler-companion to Mary Queen of Scots during her long imprisonment in England. Arbella Stuart, their granddaughter, was a heartbeat away from the throne of England and their grandson, the Lord General of the North, fought to save the crown for Charles I. 
 
With the help of previously unpublished material from the Chatsworth archives, The Devonshires reveals how the dynasty made and lost fortunes, fought and fornicated, built great houses, patronised the arts and pioneered the railways, made great scientific discoveries, and, in the end, came to terms with changing times.

Roy Hattersley

[Roy Hattersley] is very good: Catholics is a great read and spectacularly well-researched…. British Politics, especially the shipwrecked Labour Party, could do with a generation of Hattersleys – tough, committed, smart and cultivated.

[An] elegantly written, sweeping account of Catholics in these islands from the Reformation to the present day. It’s a tale of high drama and high stakes, by turns horrifying, romantic and ultimately hopeful.

big-hearted, fair-minded, insightful...a joy to read

Enjoyable… Perfectly solid, sensible and often astute.

Hattersley narrates… with his characteristic energy… His talent for invective remains strong.

Hattersley offers a scholarly chronicle of heroism and holiness in post-Reformation Britain, when the age of Catholic saints and miracles was seen to survive against the odds.

Thoroughly entertaining… I heartily recommend this volume, which is written with great brio, intelligence and charm; and with a wistful distance from his subjects’ faith which I found very appealing.

Hattersley… excels in describing political machinations… One must admire his courage, not to say his chutzpah, in undertaking a book of such enormous scope.

Thoughtful and thought provoking, minutely researched and well-written

The author writes with authority... He engages with his material and shares his enthusiasm with the reader. But equally he is detached: he has no interest in covering up scandals or selling a party line. The engaged outsider becomes a compelling biographer, at once intrigued and underwhelmed by his subject-matter

The Church and its People in Britain and Ireland, from the Reformation to the Present Day

The story of Catholicism in Britain from the Reformation to the present day, from a master of popular history – 'A first-class storyteller' The Times 
 
Throughout the three hundred years that followed the Act of Supremacy – which, by making Henry VIII head of the Church, confirmed in law the breach with Rome – English Catholics were prosecuted, persecuted and penalised for the public expression of their faith. Even after the passing of the emancipation acts Catholics were still the victims of institutionalised discrimination. 
 
The first book to tell the story of the Catholics in Britain in a single volume, The Catholics includes much previously unpublished information. It focuses on the lives, and sometimes deaths, of individual Catholics – martyrs and apostates, priests and laymen, converts and recusants. It tells the story of the men and women who faced the dangers and difficulties of being what their enemies still call ‘Papists’. It describes the laws which circumscribed their lives, the political tensions which influenced their position within an essentially Anglican nation and the changes in dogma and liturgy by which Rome increasingly alienated their Protestant neighbours – and sometime even tested the loyalty of faithful Catholics. 
 
The survival of Catholicism in Britain is the triumph of more than simple faith. It is the victory of moral and spiritual unbending certainty. Catholicism survives because it does not compromise. It is a characteristic that excites admiration in even a hardened atheist.

Roy Hattersley

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5 Catholic-inspired books

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