The Catholics
by Roy Hattersley, Chatto and Windus, £25
Roy Hattersley is the son of a Catholic priest, as he recounts in the opening pages of this thoroughly entertaining new book. He only discovered the truth when he was 40, after his dad died. “I never wondered why my father – a lowly local government officer who went with my mother to Church of England evensong – knew that Bonnie Prince Charlie’s brother had been made the Cardinal Archbishop of Frascati … Nor was I in the least surprised when – during the visits to historic churches we often made together – he translated the Latin tombstone inscriptions on sight.”
