A Gentle Jesuit: The Life of Philip Caraman, S.J., 1911-1998

To someone who knows Philip Caraman primarily as the historian who brought to life the exploits of Elizabethan Jesuits, or as the chronicler of the travels and travails of Jesuit missionaries in exotic lands, the supposition that a biography of Caraman himself would provide as compelling a story fine might seem far-fetched. (It is interesting to note that Martin Stannard, in his multivolume study of Evelyn Waugh published in the early 1990s, adopted the perspective of Caraman's detractors in this episode without critical examination, to the annoyance of the octogenarian priest who could have offered a different perspective on the jealousies and infighting that permeated the office and the Society at the time.) The demotion, however, did not prevent Caraman from completing his most lasting contribution to recusant history, his definitive biography Henry Garnet and the Gunpowder Plot, 1551-1606.