In support of The Canterbury Gift
The Red Dean of Canterbury
The Public and Private Faces of Hewlett Johnson
John Butler
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"Local author wins Archbishop's accolade"
The latest book from Canterbury based author John Butler has been selected by Archbishop Rowan Williams as his Book of the Year in “New Statesman” magazine. He says of “The Red Dean of Canterbury: The Public and Private faces of Hewlett Johnson” :
This is a first class biography of Hewlett Johnson, dean of Canterbury for several decades, champion of Stalin and thorn in the flesh of successive archbishops…Butler gives us a finely nuanced picture of a not wholly sympathetic personality, using lots of hitherto unquarried sources. The author, John Butler said: I am delighted to hear of Rowan Williams’ choice and I feel honoured that my book has been singled out in this way. I hope many people will now enjoy this candid portrait of an extraordinary man and career deserves to be seen in a new light.
- Examines the extraordinary life and career of one of the most complex and intriguing figures in 20th-century Britain
- Draws on hitherto unpublished personal letters and other previously unexplored archives, including those of MI5 and Hewlett’s personal collection
- Published on the 80th anniversary of the ‘Red Dean’s’ appointment as Dean of Canterbury
- With a foreword by Hewlett Johnson’s elder daughter
In the mid-twentieth century, few people in Britain divided public opinion more than Hewlett
Johnson, the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury Cathedral from 1931 to 1963. Converted to socialism in the 1890s, he trained as an engineer, was ordained in 1906, and served as a parish priest in Cheshire and Dean of
Manchester Cathedral before his promotion to Canterbury. When he retired at the age of eighty-nine, he had served almost sixty years in the Anglican ministry. At the heart of Johnson’s Christian faith was his
unshakeable conviction that the principles of communism were all but indistinguishable from Jesus’s
teaching about the Kingdom of God on earth. For those who heard his sermons on Christianity and politics,
Hewlett Johnson was either adored as a Christian visionary or hated as a mouthpiece of Soviet propaganda.
There was little middle ground.
Although despised by many senior figures in the Church of England, Hewlett Johnson was welcomed
in high political places throughout the world. He had audiences with Stalin, Khrushchev, Molotov and
Malenkov, Mao Tse-Tung and Chou En-Lai, Castro and Che Guevara. He also talked with Truman in the
White House. He was tracked by MI5 for thirty-five years, was awarded the Soviet equivalent of the Nobel
Peace Prize, twice spoke to huge audiences at Madison Square Garden in New York, and was condemned by an Archbishop of Canterbury as ‘blind, unreasonable and stupid’. He was a prolific writer and a gifted orator, had two long marriages each of nearly thirty years, and became a father for the first time at the age of sixty-six.
This biography neither lauds nor condemns him, but re-examines his extraordinary life and career on the 80th anniversary of his appointment as Dean of Canterbury.
All the royalties from the sale of the book will go to the Canterbury Gift, the charity that raises funds
for the repair and conservation of Canterbury Cathedral.
John Butler is the author of the acclaimed The Quest for Becket’s Bones (Yale) and Emeritus Professor
of Health Service Studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has lived in Canterbury for over forty years and is a guide at Canterbury Cathedral.
Publishing September 2011, £16.95
Published by Scala Publishers
hardback, 234 x 156mm, 352 pages (69 plates), ISBN: 978-1-85759-736-3
