Quentin de la bedoyere biography of martin

Count Michael Anthony Maurice de la Bédoyère (1900–1973) was an English writer, editor and journalist.

Life

He was educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, and took a first in "Modern Greats" (PPE) at Campion Hall, Oxford University.

His initial plans to become a Jesuit priest were abandoned. In 1930-1931 he lectured at the University of Minnesota. In 1934 he became editor of the Catholic Herald, a post he held until 1962. During this time he transformed it from one of limited regional appeal into a more challenging and intellectual newspaper, which often brought it into conflict with the more conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church.

Quentin de la bedoyere biography of martin

Circulation increased to six figures.

After he left, he founded the magazine Search. During these years he wrote a number of books, mainly biographies such as those of Lafayette (1932), George Washington (1935), St Francis of Assisi (1962),as well as theological works such as Christianity in the Mark

Count Michael Anthony Maurice de la Bédoyère (1900–1973) was an English writer, editor and journalist.

Life

He was educated at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, and took a first in "Modern Greats" (PPE) at Campion Hall, Oxford University. His initial plans to become a Jesuit priest were abandoned. In 1930-1931 he lectured at the University of Minnesota. In 1934 he became editor of the Catholic Herald, a post he held until 1962. During this time he transformed it from one of limited regional appeal into a more challenging and intellectual newspaper, which often brought it into conflict with the more conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church. Circulation increased to six figures.

After he left, he founded the magazine Search. During these years he wrote a number of books, mainly biographies such as those of Lafayette (1932), George Washington (1935), St Francis of Assisi (1962),as well as theological works such as Christianity in the Market Place (1943).

During the late 1930s, de la Bédoyère's Catholic sympathies encouraged him to support in the pages of his newspaper the Nationalists led by General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He was strongly anti-communist and believed support for the Nationalist side would hasten peace and be in the interests of Spain. However, he criticised Franco's bombing of Republican cities, saying "We deplore it because there is ground for discussing any plan that may save the lives of women and innocent children, his own country-folk, who will not forget, because Franco has set himself an extremely high ideal and as such he should do all that he can to render less inhuman an inevitable war, and because such bombing does his cause infinite harm from the point of view of world propaganda."

During the Second World War, he almost went to prison for criticising what he saw as Churchill's appeasement of the "godless" Soviet Union.

De la Bédoyère had five children by his first

Quentin de la Bédoyère, 1934-2023

Quentin de la Bédoyère died on 1 August, at the age of 88. A former Catholic Herald columnist, he used to relate how, when he was a teenaged second lieutenant on national service in Austria in the early 1950s, illiterate servicemen in his transport regiment would ask him to read out their letters from home. Meanwhile, his own post arrived from his mother, Catherine, and from his father, Michael – who was then editor – written from the Herald’s offices on Whitefriars Street, with Blitz-flattened buildings all around as Britian continued to recover from the Second World War. 

Educated by the Jesuits at Beaumont College, Quentin had gone to Austria after a period at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, but not before he had met his future wife, Irene Gough. They were married in 1956 at the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer & St Thomas More in Chelsea, and together they raised five children at their home in Wimbledon. Quentin worked with the Sun Life Assurance of Canada for the whole of his professional career; there he expanded his management skills and widened his taste for travel. 

In retirement, Quentin wrote the Herald’s “Science and Faith” column, the “Charterhouse Chronicle” – a retake of Michael de la Bédoyère’s informal “Jotter”, a sort of literary chat show intended to enhance readership – and a variety of interesting features. To these, he added a number of books on theology and business psychology and numerous engagements as a public speaker.

It was as a committed and educated Catholic husband and father, however, that Quentin came into his own. He was a layman who used his skills to spread the Kingdom of God in the spirit of Vatican II; an annual excitement for the family was the Family Week run by Fr Conrad Pepler OP and Sr Assunta Kirwan OP at Hawkesyard Priory and Spode House.

In the 1960s and 70s, he and Irene served as c