Everywhere in England, from Canterbury and Glastonbury in the South, by way of Tintern and Bury St Edmunds in the Midlands, to Fountains, Rievaulx and Whitby in the North, extending even to Lindisfarne, Melrose and Iona in the Far North, one comes upon the ruins of abbeys, priories, and other religious houses, all of them suppressed and largely destroyed by the wrath and greed of one man, King Henry VIII, with the able assistance of his vicar general Thomas Cromwell, in the brief period from 1536 to 1540. Shakespeare recalls them in his Sonnet 73 as "bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." He compares them to the trees in a forest during winter, when only the bare branches remain, while the birds have flown away. Yet even today the ruins remain as a reminder of what England was once, and through them the spirit of the monks still breathes in praise of God.
Peter Milward was born in London on October 12, 1925, and educated at Wimbledon College (a Jesuit high school). He entered the Society of Jesus in 1943, and after various studies he went on to specialize in the Classics and English at Oxford University. He came to Japan in 1954 and after further studies was ordained priest in 1960. From 1962 onwards he has taught English literature at Sophia University in Tokyo. In addition to founding the Renaissance Institute, the Hopkins Society of Japan and the Chesterton Society of Japan, he has published some 400 books, mostly as textbooks for Japanese students, many of them translated into Japanese, but now most of them out of print. Several of his books, especially those on the drama of Shakespeare and the poetry of Hopkins, have been published in England and America. Even in retirement he is still teaching and writing, as he enters his 88th year (or beiju).
