'I embarrassed myself by uncontrollable guffaws ... This is a truly wonderful story' A. N. Wilson, Spectator
Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell's Presumptuous Task, winner of the US National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John Le Carre, A. J. P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the University of St Andrews.
A twisty, tricksy biography ... a thorough and thoroughly
entertaining reconstruction of the life and lies of Robert Peters.
Suspend your disbelief ... The Professor and the Parson would make
a fine TV series along the lines of A Very English Scandal. Russell
T Davies, if you're reading, this stuff is gold.
*The Times*
Meticulously researched and flawlessly written, the book treats its
obscure, contemptible subject with the same professionalism that
Mr. Sisman brought to Trevor-Roper and the Boswell-Johnson
relationship. If Peters seems a parody of the lecherous clergyman
and the ruthless academic, Mr. Sisman is a model of the
incorruptible biographer.
*Wall Street Journal*
[A] gripping roller-coaster ride of fibs and frauds ... To say of a
book that, once you start reading it, you cannot stop, is always a
cliché and often an exaggeration. Yet it really was my experience
with this one. Various chores were put off and a meal skipped as I
kept turning the pages.
*Sunday Telegraph*
Sisman's deadpan tone heightens [Peters'] comic effects. Often
while reading his book in a public place I embarrassed myself by
uncontrollable guffaws ... This is a truly wonderful story.
*Spectator*
A lively, well-written story of skulduggery
*Sunday Times*
Entertaining ... Sisman is a serious writer of nonfiction ... but
he has a novelist's sense of the importance of showing, not
telling.
*Observer*
[A] delicious true story ... fascinating.
*TLS*
The Professor and the Parson is a fantastic read and fully deserves
to be among everyone's books of the year. It is full of wonderful
stories and splendidly comic moments. It is also beautifully
written.
*Literary Review*
Astonishing ... fascinating, eye-opening
*Emerald Street*
A tortuous, intriguing and barely believable story, which sheds a
fierce but comic spotlight on the ineptitude, gullibility and
naivety of countless senior prelates and academics who were taken
in by a consummate and unrepentant charlatan ... a dizzy and
diverting read
*Herald Scotland*
Witty, impressive and captivatingly readable ... incredibly well
researched ... a real achievement. It's also great fun. I laughed
out loud ... one day this tale will make a fantastic BBC adaptation
or even film. Think A Very English Scandal, but with clerical
collars.
*History Today*
I was captivated from start to finish by this utterly mad, and
wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy, and which
involves a man who relentlessly duped our most cherished
institutions of godly pursuit and higher learning. Plus I learned
how to defrock a priest, always good to have on hand in these
troubling times.
*Simon Winchester*
A delightful, delicious tale from the Hugh Trevor-Roper archive of
Oxford skulduggery. Robert Parkin Peters is one of the oddest, most
compulsive conmen ever, longing - and spectacularly failing - to
achieve prominence in academia and the Church.
*Harry Mount*
An entertaining ... chronicle of naughty clerics, bewildered dons
and tabloid titillation
*Sydney Morning Herald*
This gripping account of a recalcitrant 20th-century con man from
National Book Critics Circle Award winner proves the old adage that
truth is stranger than fiction
*Publishers Weekly Starred Review*
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