In my book Utterly Immoral I write about Robert Keable’s time in Zanzibar. He arrived on the island at the beginning of January 1912 taking up the post of vice-principle of St. Andrew’s College.

Keable – newly priested, having just finished a one-year curacy in Bradford – had joined the Universities Mission of Central Africa (UMCA), an organisation he had campaigned for ever since he heard Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, call for volunteers in a major speech at Cam…

On Friday 16th Decemebr 2022 my aricle on Robert Keable was published in the Church Times. You can see it online at:

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/16-december/features/features/a-scandalous-novel-that-changed-a-cleric-s-life

The Bishop of Zanzibar and Robert Keable

Frank Weston was one of the greats of Anglo-Catholicism of the early twentieth century. Indeed Desmond Morse-Boycott, in his introduction to his book on the saints and heroes of the Oxford Movement, wrote nine years after his death, in 1933:

the hero of the Movement is still Frank Weston, the late Bishop of Zanzibar, a man in a million, nay more, of a century, even of an aeon. When the mourning bells tolled in the cathedral of Zanzibar, built where…

As I explain in my book, Utterly Immoral, Robert Keable made a number of religious journeys during his life, perhaps the most significant being his move from Low Church evangelical to High Church Anglo-Catholic. His father had been a late recruit to the Church, becoming a priest in his late forties. He and his wife were very puritanical, and Robert was happy throughout his childhood to embrace their values and way of life.

Robert becomes an Anglo-Catholic

It was at Cambridge, particularl…

Robert Keable's girlfriend during the War, Jolie Buck was my grandmother, so when I began to reasearch Robert Keable's life I clearly had a vested interest in finding out as much as I could about her as well. Her mother had been a Beresford so I thought it would be fun to join the Beresford Society. Very kindly they have published a short article by me, on Jolie, in their society magazine under the heading Beresford girl Jolie Buck.

Article for the Beresford (Autumn 2022)

The…

In my book Utterly Immoral I discuss the attempts made to turn Robert Keable’s novel Simon Called Peter into a play. According to a press release in 1922 Robert travelled to Tahiti to allow him the peace and quiet needed to write a treatment of his novel for the theatre. I have not been able to find out what happened to this treatment, if it was ever completed, and anyway over in America William A Brady, the theatrical producer, was eager to get things moving. So Brady purchased the …

As I explain in my new book Utterly Immoral Robert Keable came to novel writing late. Having already written and published ten or more books of varying genre, he was over thirty when he wrote his first novel, and already three quarters of the way through his life. What is confusing is how autobiographical his novels are, and the problem for a biographer is to pick through what is fiction and what is reality. The first half of Peradventure is almost 100% autobiography, both he and the hero of th…

This year the BBC is celebrating their 100^th anniversary. On November 14^th, 1922, they began their first daily radio broadcasts. At the time Robert Keable was in Australia, on his way to Tahiti, so he would have to wait over a year before he could have a listen. A year later, at the same time as Robert was heading back to England, the Radio Times was launched. On his return to England Robert was commissioned to write two articles for the new magazine, for which he was paid £26.10s.0d, the…

The reviewer of Simon Called Peter, in The Church Times on May 6^th, 1921, was about as rude as one can be about a new novel. The review was headed, in classic British understatement:

A Very Disagreeable Novel

The reviewer was not just angry they were disappointed. As they pointed out at the beginning of the piece:

For some years past we have watched the literary career of Mr Robert Keable with much sympathy and interest. His imaginative gift is a rare quality and he is a possessor besi…

Where would you go?

Is 2022 that different from 1922? Imagine you wanted to escape England today, where would you go? Of course, it all depends on why you wanted to escape. If it was to get away from the political and economic situation – and it feels as bad as it has ever been at the moment – America or New Zealand could be possibilities. But if it was to get away from the English-speaking world, from appalling reviews and vitriol for an unacclaimed book? Perhaps France or Spain…

One hundred years ago this month, the bodies of a man and woman were found in a field in New Brunswick, New Jersey, laid out, side-by-side, with their feet pointing towards an apple tree. The calling card of the man, Rev Edward Hall, was placed at his feet. Torn up love letters between him and the woman, Mrs Eleanor Mills, were scattered around them. Both had been shot in the head with a .32-caliber pistol, the priest once and the member of his choir three times.

For some the story of Hall-M…