Partner Dunstan Thompson
Queer Places:
Eton College, Windsor, Windsor and Maidenhead SL4 6DW
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
John
Philip Trower (May 16, 1923 - January 9, 2019) was a Catholic writer. He wrote essays about the post-Conciliar crisis for The Wanderer, an American Catholic weekly. One series he penned, about the heresy of Modernism and its re-emergence in our time, was later collected in a book, The Church Learned and the Revolt of the Scholars. This was followed by two more accomplished works, Turmoil and Truth: The Historical Roots of the Modern Crisis in the Catholic Church, and The Catholic Church and the Counter-Faith: A Study of the Roots of Modern Secularism, Relativism and de-Christianisation.
His work has been praised by Father Aidan Nichols, James Hitchcock and Tracey Rowlands, among other Catholic luminaries.
John Philip Trower was born into a prominent Anglican family. He attended school in Dorset before spending four years at Eton College. He enrolled at New College in January 1941 as he was "not yet ready to be called up" to the Army, and remembers his time at university fondly. "I left school a bit early," Trower said. "My father was going to send me to do legal studies but the law school closed down in London because of the bombing.
"He sent me to Oxford to do a short wartime degree, which existed then."
Commissioned by the British army in 1942, he joined the Rifle Brigade, and took part in the Italian campaign, where he was wounded but survived to complete his military service as an intelligence officer in Egypt.
During the War, he had drifted away from his Christian faith, and his personal life subsequently “went off the rails.” Toward the end of his service, Philip met the American émigré,
Dunstan Thompson, a fallen-away Catholic who by then had become a prominent “gay” poet. The two became lovers and went off to live in a small British village. Dunstan continued writing poetry and Philip became a successful novelist and writer for the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement.
Philip and Dunstan were visiting Walsingham one weekend, not far from where they lived, when a procession of the Blessed Sacrament passed by. Dunstan suddenly fell to his knees and made the sign of the Cross – all before his shocked companion. Philip immediately sensed there was something much greater than his earthly relationship with Dunstan, and that it would have profound consequences for their lives. After Dunstan told Philip that he had made a complete confession and reconciled with the Church, Philip knew that meant an immediate end to their sexual relationship. At first, Philip felt isolated and abandoned, but soon realised it was a great blessing. The two remained very close companions,
and Philip served as Dunstans’ literary executor after the poet’s death in 1975.
In 2018 Trower graduated from Oxford University, 76 years after he completed his degree.
A New College statement described the graduation as "long-awaited", adding: "At the fantastic age of 95, Philip has to be one of our oldest alumni to come back and graduate."
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