They are both likable, insofar as they are genuinely idealistic and fully believe in the creed of secular humanism, and insofar as they genuinely love each other as husband and wife, each desiring the good of the other. The former is devout, though troubled with doubt the latter is an apostate who becomes a high-profile practitioner of the new secular humanist “religion.” The other primary characters are Oliver and Mabel Brand, a socialist politician and his wife. The two priests at the center of Lord of the World are Fr. (Indeed, Benson’s work should be studied diligently by all those who wish to write Christian fiction well.) Such realism saves his work from the preachiness which is the death of so much Christian fiction. There are no devilishly wicked or psychopathic villains, and there are no angelic, sin-free, sugar-coated saints. He never falls into the trap of reducing his characters to two-dimensional caricatures. Such a balanced and genuinely humane approach to the dignity of the human person is a characteristic of all of Benson’s novels. The principal characters of Lord of the World are realistically and sympathetically depicted, even those who advocate the new atheism. Huxley warns of the corrupting influence of the pursuit of comfort, showing a society that somnambulates toward luxurious slavery Orwell shows the sheer horror of totalitarian control over the lives of individuals Benson shows how atheism, in the guise of secular humanism, emerges as a rival religion to Christianity, intent on global domination. Aside from his historical romances, he was equally adept at novels with a contemporary setting, such as The Necromancers, a cautionary tale about the dangers of spiritualism, or with dystopic futuristic fantasies, such as Lord of the World, which warrants a place beside Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a classic of dystopian fiction and as a work of prophecy.Įach of these cautionary tales set in an imaginary future has a prophetic element which remains as relevant as ever. Such was Benson’s genius, however, that he was not constrained by any one literary genre. In The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary, the reader is taken a century further back in time to the happier, merrier England of the early fifteenth century to meet the colorful character of “Master Richard,” a holy hermit on a God-given mission. In novels such as The King’s Achievement, By What Authority? and Come Rack! Come Rope! he takes the reader into the dark and deadly heart of the Tudor Terror during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in the sixteenth century. Robert Hugh Benson is best known for historical fiction.
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