Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was well known as a public intellectual of his time, a prolific writer, speaker and outspoken critic of the growing secularisation of the western world. Son of the evangelical Bishop of Manchester, Ronald was a brilliant classical scholar at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. Sadly, he lost most of his close friends in the Great War of 1914-18. An Anglican priest, he converted to Catholicism in 1917, and despite finding the English Catholic world unfamiliar and challenging, he made his way up the hierarchy, translating the New Testament and becoming a monsignor.
In this essay I look at two of his books: Caliban in Grub Street (1930) and Enthusiasm (1950), the last being his “Big Book”, a lifelong study of Christian heresies. Click on Knox above.
Paul Crook 