Walsingham - England's Nazareth - is one of the most remarkable phenomena in English Church life this century: a restored medieval shrine in a remote part of Norfolk, to which thousands of pilgrims journey every year. An eleventh century Lady of the Manor had a vision of Mary and, following instructions, built a replica of Christ's home in Nazareth. A healing well sprang up. Pilgrims came; miracles happened. But the Reformation saw an end of the Shrine until 1921, when Fr. Hope Patten restored it. A holy and entertaining eccentric, he was Administrator at Walsingham until Colin Stephenson succeeded him. Walsingham Way is the first full-length book about the Shrine, and about Hope Patten. It is a story told with candour and a good deal of humour by the one man ideally qualified to tell it.

Walsingham Way

Stephenson, Colin

Religion & Spirituality

Darton,Longman & Todd

Merrily on high

Barton, Longman and Todd

Widely regarded as one of the most amusing ecclesiastical memoirs of the 20th century, Colin Stephenson's autobiography is an Anglo-Catholic classic, embodying a great love for people and a relish for their eccentricities and foibles. The heady peaks of Tractarian glories between the wars decidedly shaped Colin Stephenson's preferences. Young and impressionable, he revelled in the rich ceremonial of continental Catholicism in all its triumphal self-assurance. As an inexperienced naval chaplain in the Second World War, he set about installing baroque altars on warships, despite the 'violent firmness' with which certain admirals and captains reacted. Such encounters delighted him and many episodes are stories told against himself. After the war, and despite serious injury, he returned to Oxford and created the 'highest church in the city', before succeeding Alfred Hope Patten as Guardian of the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, where he found plenty to satisfy his appetite for the oddities of high Anglicanism. 'It may be a trivial record', he writes, 'but I hope it is illuminated by love and I think I have made myself as ridiculous as anyone.'

Morehouse-Barlow Co.

Our Solitary Boast

The Church Union

<p>Widely regarded as one of the most amusing ecclesiastical memoirs of the 20th century, Colin Stephenson's autobiography is an Anglo-Catholic classic, embodying a great love for people and a relish for their eccentricities and foibles. The heady peaks of Tractarian glories between the wars decidedly shaped Colin Stephenson's preferences. Young and impressionable, he revelled in the rich ceremonial of continental Catholicism in all its triumphal self-assurance. As an inexperienced naval chaplain in the Second World War, he set about installing baroque altars on warships, despite the 'violent firmness' with which certain admirals and captains reacted. Such encounters delighted him and many episodes are stories told against himself. After the war, and despite serious injury, he returned to Oxford and created the 'highest church in the city', before succeeding Alfred Hope Patten as Guardian of the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, where he found plenty to satisfy his appetite for the oddities of high Anglicanism. 'It may be a trivial record', he writes, 'but I hope it is illuminated by love and I think I have made myself as ridiculous as anyone.'</p>

Merrily on High: An Anglo-Catholic Memoir

Christian Books & Bibles

Canterbury Press Norwich

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Books by Stephenson, Colin