The Professor and the Parson

Reviews / Votes

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. -- Laura Freeman * 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 cliche 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. -- Noel Malcolm * 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. -- A. N. Wilson * Spectator * A lively, well-written story of skulduggery -- Rosamund Urwin * Sunday Times * Entertaining ... Sisman is a serious writer of nonfiction ... but he has a novelist's sense of the importance of showing, not telling. -- Alex Preston * Observer * [A] delicious true story ... fascinating. -- Ysenda Maxton Graham * 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. -- William Whyte * 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 -- Rosemary Goring * 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 *