Melanie McDonagh, "Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century" (Yale UP, 2025)

New Books in Religion · Dec 6, 2025 · 52m

The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked turn to Rome. In the first half of the century, Catholicism became an intellectual and spiritual fashion attracting more than half a million converts, including fascinating artists, writers, and thinkers. What drew these men and women to join the church, and what difference did conversion make to them?

In Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century (Yale UP, 2025), Melanie McDonagh examines the lives…