British Catholic author, editor and translator (1892-1977)
Donald Attwater byEric Gill, 1929, private collection.
Donald Attwater (24 December 1892 – 30 January 1977) was a British Catholic author, editor and translator, and a visiting lecturer at theUniversity of Notre Dame.
Attwater was born inEssex,England, on 24 December 1892. His parents were Methodists who became Anglicans while Attwater was a child. He himself became a Catholic at the age of 18. He studied Law but did not earn a degree.[1]
He served in theSinai and Palestine campaign during theFirst World War, developing an interest inEastern Christianity while in the Middle East. After the war, he lived for a time onCaldey Island, undergoing the influence of the monks ofCaldey Abbey.[2] He also became a friend and admirer ofEric Gill. Throughout the 1930s, 40s and 50s he was a frequent contributor to the Catholic press in both Britain and America, and a prolific author of books on Christian themes.
In 1936, he was one of the founders of the Catholic peace movement Pax, which opposed the invasion ofAbyssinia byFascist Italy.[3]
Attwater was married to Rachel Attwater of South Wales, a fellow historian and published author onCatholic saints in the Orient.[4] He died inStorrington,Sussex, in February 1977.[5]
^Catherine Rachel John, "Donald Attwater 1892 - 1997: A Man for His Time and Ours",The Chesterton Review, 29:4 (2003), p. 519.
^Karen Jankulak, "Present and Yet Absent: The Cult of St Samson of Dol in Wales", inSt Samson of Dol and the Earliest History of Brittany, Cornwall and Wales, edited by Lynette Olson (Boydell & Brewer, 2017), p. 166
^Tom Villis,British Catholics and Fascism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 199-200.
^Attwater, Rachel (1963).Adam Schall: A Jesuit in the Court of China, 1592-1666.Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company.
