Brian Martin
Christmas brings us towards the end of this centenary year of John Henry Newman's death. No one interested in Newman stu- dies would have expected yet another biography to follow so soon Father Ian Ker's volume of last year which was considered definitive. The unexpected has happened, and, dare one say it, Sheridan Gilley's Newman and his Age (Darton, Longman & Todd, £25) eclipses Ker's, and is considerably cheaper. Gilley, a man of exceptionally wide reading, and thor- oughly familiar with the history, politics and literature of the 19th century, has simply written a more interesting book. Newmanists cannot do without it.
Those wishing to consider 20th-century versions of the Roman Catholic Church militant around the world should read Peter Rawlinson's The Jesuit Factor (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £18). The frag- mentation of the Jesuit Order is apparent in the controversy between the Polish Jesuits and their brethren in America who co-habit, even in government, with avowed enemies of the faith. The reader will detect a real-life continuation and expansion of Monsignor Quixote's serious debate with the communist ex-mayor of El Tobosco.
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