Christopher Howse
Why bother reading new books when you haven't finished the old ones? Be that as it may, it was a great pleasure to see Ronald Knox's Enthusiasm (Collins, £9.95) come out in paperback. 'Paroxysms', reads the index, 'among Beghards, Anabaptists and modern negroes; among very early Quak- ers; among Jansenist convulsionaries; at EvertOn; among school children; at Chapel-en-le-Frith, with unsuitable accom- paniments'. So it goes on: a lasting work of scholarship and a joy to read. Julian Spilsbury's Captain Coranto (Hodder & Stoughton, £10.95) is a spirited novel of criminal low life in the late 17th century. The villain has a family resembl- ance to Peachum of The Beggar's Opera, Which is to say, the thief-taker Jonathan Wild. The pace hots up with a beautifully sustained chase sequence and a moving denouement of violent death.
The Queen of Heaven (Macdonald Orbis, £30) by Bruce Bernard is more an altar-piece than a coffee-table book. As a selection of hundreds of old master paint- ings of the Blessed Virgin Mary, repro- duced in large colour plates, it traces the realisation and the loss of an ideal in the hiMory of art. But more than that, it demonstrates a particularly striking observation Bernard makes in his preface: that 'a sense of her total permeation of things' is most easily gained through paint- ing.
Among the things I learned from John Henry Newman's Callista is that lion cut- lets were a favourite dish in third-century north Africa. It is time some publisher got this novel back in print.
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