The Life Of The Right Reverend Ronald Knox [antikvár]

PREFACE RONALdKnox lacked only longevity to be a national figure. Had he lived to be eighty he would, most unwillingly, ^have found himself assumed into that odd circle of ancient savants and charlatans whom the Sovereign delights to honour and the populär press treats with some semblance of reverence. He died at sixty-nine still essentially a private person. liais book, I surmise, will prove to be the forerunner of many weightier studies of him. Its primary purpose is to tell the story of his exterior life, not to give a conspectus of his thought; still less to measure his spiritual achievements. His published works provide abundant material for research and criticism by special-ists in many subjects. Here I have attempted to give the essential biographical facts they will need. How do I corne to be writing it? the reader may ask. In 1950 Ronald asked if he might appoint me in his will as his sole literary executor. There was not much more than fifteen years between us; the clergy are notoriously longer Uved than the laity; I did not tbink it Jikely my services would be needed. But he put my name down and left it there. One of my duties was to appoint his officiai biographer. He was himself one of Hilaire Belloc's literary executors and, three years later, when we were discussing the choice of Belloc's biographer, I raised the question of his own. 'Yes, I suppose someone will want to write something,' he said without enthusi-asm. He had grown up in a tradition by which everyone had some literary commémoration, even the men of twenty who were killed in battle, and he regarded the attention of a biographer as an inévitable concomitant of death like that of the coffin-maker and grave-digger. Later he spoke of writing his auto-biography. Until the end of 1956 it did not occur to me that I should outlive him; early in 1957 it seemedprobable that I would do so, and I conceived the ambition of attempting the portrait myself. At die end of June, when he knew he was dying, he gave 13