Colin Stephenson was one of the 20th century's most amusing and self-deprecating observers of High Anglicanism to which he was devoted. This is a reissue of his first book in which he tells, with characteristic candour and humour, the story of the re-founding of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham by Alfred Hope Patten, whom he succeeded as Guardian after Hope Patten's death.
Alfred Hope Patten was a larger than life figure, terrifying to some, but determined to realise his vision of restoring the medieval shrine in the Norfolk countryside that had been closed at the Reformation. Colin Stephenson's account of his ambitious enterprise, his successes and failures (including a failed attempt to establish religious communities of men and women at Walsingham), his penchant for flamboyant clerical dress, his love of the Roman Church but his dislike of Roman Catholics, does not claim to be the last word in historical scholarship, but is a warm, engaging and entertaining account of one the highest achievements of Anglo-Catholicism in the last century and of one of its most colourful and controversial personalities.
This classic book, first published in 1970, has been reissued complete with a period retro-style cover; it will be of interest to the hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Catholics who flock to Walsingham each year.
Colin Stephenson was Guardian of Walsingham from 1958 until his death in 1973. He also wrote an autobiography, Merrily On High, which has also recently been re-issued.