“Two Lives” Reviewed

Waugh’s biographies of two Roman Catholic priests (Edmund Campion and Ronald Knox) were published as a single volume entitled Two Lives in 2002. A paperback edition was issued in 2005. Both editions were published by Continuum International Publishing, an independent academic press that was acquired in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing. The book has been reviewed by Eve Tushnet, who describes herself as a “gay catholic novelist”. The detailed review appears on the religious weblog Patheos. It opens with Tushnet’s summary assessment:

You should absolutely read the Campion biography. It’s passionate and the prose hangs in garlands, with thorns tipped in blood. It isn’t swoony or silly (like the sentence I just wrote), it isn’t sentimental or polemical although this is Waugh so he does stick a shiv in occasionally; in general it’s crisp and acrid, and inspiring. The Knox biography has a surprising scattering of gems for the average reader but is frankly a pretty long book to read about a good man who did not in my opinion need such a long book written about him.

Tushnet’s detailed notes about both biographies follow. 

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