Seminary Boy - Hardcover

‘“Seminary Boy” is a complex story written with beautiful and brutal exactness...an intensely involving, carefully paced book by one of the most thoughtful and well-informed of Catholic writers. A story about the loss of faith and its eventual return, it has the hold of good fiction and the grip of sober truth.’ The Guardian

‘What makes it so gripping (and it is one of the most gripping memoirs I have read for years) is its incisive style.’ Sunday Times

'A fiercely honest account of a long-vanished world, which makes clear why Cornwell has become such a trenchant critic of the Catholic Church but also why he is still drawn to it so powerfully.' The Independent

'Richly satisfying...There is a sensitive intelligence at work in this book. Moving yet unsentimental, and stunning well written, it begs a sequel.' Daily Telegraph

‘Apart from its beautiful writing, what stamps “Seminary Boy“ as a classic story of growing up is the kaleidoscope of perspectives it offers on the mystery of being...Layer after layer of art and truth compete for your attention, and the ambiguities are intrinsic to the power of the writing.’ The Spectator

‘The true journey of a soul.’ Tobias Wolff

‘Subtle and balanced...Catholicism, beautifully evoked in this restless book, is not the usual pious paraphernalia but the stubborn persistence of its hold on the human imagination.’ Literary Review

‘(Recorded) in a brisk and forceful, sometimes staccato prose that drives his story forward.’ The Times

'Deserves a place along side David Lodges “How Far Can You Go?” as an affectionate but unblinking evocation of a unique era of English Catholicism, now in danger of beng forgotten.' The Tablet

‘One of the subtlest and most moving books on the father-son predicament that I have ever read – and I couldn’t recommend it more strongly.’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Compulsive reading.’ Karen Armstrong, New Statesman

‘A compelling autobiography.' The Church Times

One of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent years, the acclaimed writer John Cornwell has finally written his own story, and the story of a choice he had to make between the Church and a life lived outside its confines.

John Cornwell decided to become a priest at the age of thirteen, a strange choice perhaps for a boy who'd been sent to a 'convalescent home' for having whacked a nun about the head. Growing up in a chaotic household, sharing two rooms with his brothers and sisters, his hot-headed mother and – when he was around – absconding father, John spent his time roaming the war-torn streets of London looking for trouble. One day, at his mother's suggestion, he responded to a call from his local parish priest for altar servers. The 'dance of the rituals', the murmur of Latin and the candlelit dawn took hold of his imagination and provided him with a new and unexpected comfort.

He left post-war London for Cotton, a seminary in the West Midlands. In this hidden, all-male world, with its rhythms of devotion and prayer, John grew up caught between his religious feelings and the rough and tumble of his life back in London; between seeking the face of God in the wild countryside around him and experiencing his first kiss; between monitoring his soul and watching a girl from a moving train whose face he will never forget.

Cornwell tells us of a world now vanished: of the colourful community of priests in charge; of the boys and their intense and sometimes passionate friendships; of the hovering threat of abuse in this cloistered environment. And he tells us of his struggle to come to terms with a shameful secret from his London childhood – a vicious sexual attack which haunts his time at Cotton.

A book of tremendous warmth and humour, ‘Seminary Boy’ is about an adolescent's search for a father and for a home.