A.N. Wilson

Peter Levi – poet, priest and life-enhancer

A review of Peter Levi: Oxford Romantic, by Brigid Allen. A loving biography of a poet priest who went from emaciated El Greco to fat country squire

Peter Levi Photo: Getty

Hilaire Belloc was once being discussed on some television programme. One of the panellists was Peter Levi. The other critics expressed their doubts about the old boy. Levi leaned forward in his chair to say, with passionate intensity, ‘But Belloc is worth discussing… because he was… very nearly a poet.’

At the time, I thought this judgment a trifle snooty. Could the words ‘very nearly a poet’ not be applied to Levi himself? In the years since he died, however, revisitations of Levi’s work have convinced me that, uneven and florid as his poetry is, he was very definitely a poet. True, you can hear echoes of his masters in his verse – Valéry, George Seferis, Wallace Stevens. But he was what the title of this book claims — an Oxford Romantic, unafraid of being heroically pretentious, who stood out against the blokeishness of ‘The Movement’ .

You could not overpraise this book. It is so punctiliously researched, and so well written. It describes a loveable, fascinating character whose life was consecrated to art; and the consecration took fascinating twists and turns. Brigid Allen has unearthed the details with prodigious skill. The father, Bert Levi, had Sephardic forebears who sold carpets in Istanbul. The fervently Catholic mother, Mollie, persuaded Bert (who had been married before) to convert. Their three children all became members of religious orders — the daughter a nun, the two boys, Anthony and Peter, Jesuits. Peter was excited by the heroism of the Elizabethan martyrs and this, combined with his admiration for his teachers at Beaumont, was what led him to join the Society of Jesus.

How could such a funny, creative, accident-prone young man fit into the Ignatian straitjacket? He would eventually leave the order and marry the widow of Cyril Connolly, so you would think his belief in a priestly vocation was a mistake.

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