Robert Hugh Benson

Come Rack, Come Rope is a gripping historical novel which takes place during Queen Elizabeth I's persecution of English Catholics. Based on the real sufferings of a real Catholic family in particular, and Catholics across the country, Robert Hugh Benson's classic novel is one of tragedy and loss, but also heroism and human and divine love. The novel follows Robin and Margaret, a young couple in love who forgo their affection when Margaret realizes...

Excerpt: "In a former book, called "Lord of the World," I attempted to sketch the kind of developments a hundred years hence which, I thought, might reasonably be expected if the present lines of what is called "modern thought" were only prolonged far enough; and I was informed repeatedly that the effect of the book was exceedingly depressing and discouraging to optimistic Christians. In the present book I am attempting also in parable form not in...

Excerpt: "The first sign of our approach to Lourdes was a vast wooden cross, crowning a pointed hill. We had been travelling all day, through the August sunlight, humming along the straight French roads beneath the endless avenues; now across a rich plain, with the road banked on either side to avert the spring torrents from the Pyrenees; now again mounting and descending a sudden shoulder of hill. A few minutes ago, we had passed into Tarbes, the...

This book, [Benson] writes, "is intended for the 'man in the street,' who, after all, has a certain claim on our consideration, since Jesus Christ came to save his soul." And for the man in the street, the greatest obstacle to accepting the truth of the Catholic Faith lies not in an intellectual inability to understand the arguments of the most sophisticated of theologians, but-as G.K. Chesterton argued in Orthodoxy-the loss of the imaginative ability...

The Light Invisible presents a series of interconnected supernatural short stories by the celebrated and prolific English author Robert Hugh Benson.

"If you want to understand me," says Pope Francis, "read this book." Speaking to a planeload of reporters on his way home from a visit to the Philippines in January 2015, the Pope explained that a reading of Lord Of The World would help people understand his fears for a secular society, including the promotion of contraception and gay marriage, a phenomenon he had described as "ideological colonisation" in Manila. First published in 1907 as a response...

Christ desires to be our Friend. But how can we respond? Taking up themes from great mystical writers, Benson gives a prophetic corrective for those in the Church who mistake "Christ's gifts for Christ, religiosity for religion, and the joys possible on earth for the joys awaiting us in heaven." Benson steers the soul away from temptations to despair and from presumption upon Christ's friendship, pointing to the consoling truth: "I am in all things...