Alfred Hope Patten was a larger than life figure, terrifying to some, but determined to realise his vision of restoring the medieval shrine in the Norfolk countryside that had been closed at the Reformation. Colin Stephenson's account of his ambitious enterprise, his successes and failures (including a failed attempt to establish religious communities of men and women at Walsingham), his penchant for flamboyant clerical dress, his love of the Roman Church but his dislike of Roman Ca...
Widely regarded as one of the most amusing ecclesiastical memoirs of the 20th century, Colin Stephenson's autobiography is an Anglo-Catholic classic, embodying a great love for people and a relish for their eccentricities and foibles. The heady peaks of Tractarian glories between the wars decidedly shaped Colin Stephenson's preferences. Young and impressionable, he revelled in the rich ceremonial of continental Catholicism in all its triumphal self-assurance. As an inexperienced nav...
