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Adam Sisman

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The Professor and the Parson: A Story of Desire, Deceit, and Defrocking Kindle Edition

by Adam Sisman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.0 37 ratings

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This “amusing and elegantly written” romp takes readers on a wild ride through the life of Robert Parkin Peters (The New York Times Book Review)—a liar, bigamist, and fraudulent priest who tricked some of the brightest minds of his generation.

One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor–Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor–Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, bigamist, fraudulent priest, and imposter extraordinaire.

The Professor and the Parson is a witty and charming portrait of eccentricity, extraordinary narcissism, and a life as wild and unlikely as any in fiction. Motivated not by money but by a desire for prestige, Peters lied, stole, and cheated his way to academic positions and religious posts from Cambridge to New York. Frequently deported, and even more frequently discovered, he left a trail of destruction including seven marriages (three of which were bigamous) and an investigation by the FBI.

"I was captivated from start to finish by this utterly mad, and wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy, and which involves a man who relentlessly duped our most cherished institutions of godly pursuit and higher learning. Plus I learned how to defrock a priest, always good to have on hand in these troubling times." —Simon Winchester, author of The Perfectionists

Editorial Reviews

Review

Longlisted for the ALCS Gold Dagger for Non–Fiction

“Amusing and elegantly written.” —Lawrence Osborne, The New York Times Book Review

“Adam Sisman consistently strikes an ideal balance of intellect and feeling, seriousness and levity, rigor and readability. He’s also intriguingly unpredictable in his choice of subjects and never more so than with The Professor and the Parson . . . Meticulously researched and flawlessly written, the book treats its obscure, contemptible subject with the same professionalism that Mr. Sisman brought to Trevor–Roper and the Boswell–Johnson relationship. If Peters seems a parody of the lecherous clergyman and the ruthless academic, Mr. Sisman is a model of the incorruptible biographer.” —Ben Downing, The Wall Street Journal

“A reader’s delight . . . [An] excellent account of a sanctimonious, egotistical crook and hypocrite.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“An astonishing story of decades of deception by a slithery English academic and cleric . . . Jaw–dropping . . . A captivating true tale that makes even the most intricate con–artist movies look cartoonish.” —Kirkus Reviews

“This gripping account of a recalcitrant 20th–century con man from National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Sisman proves the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Riveting . . . Sisman tells this delectable tale with such flair that it is almost impossible not to savor his account of Peters’s exploits in a single sitting.” —Spectator USA

“Entertaining . . . Far from being the lovable rogue of fiction and film, Peters emerges as a quite despicable, though endlessly fascinating, character.” —Patricia Hagen, Star–Tribune (Minneapolis)

“I was captivated from start to finish by this utterly mad, and wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy, and which involves a man who relentlessly duped our most cherished institutions of godly pursuit and higher learning. Plus I learned how to defrock a priest, always good to have on hand in these troubling times.” —Simon Winchester, author of The Perfectionists

About the Author

Adam Sisman is the author of Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the biographer of John Le Carré, A. J. P. Taylor, and Hugh Trevor–Roper. Among his other works are two volumes of letters by Patrick Leigh Fermor. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an honorary fellow of the University of St Andrews.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07RXZSWGC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Counterpoint; Illustrated edition (February 4, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 4, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 15541 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1640093281

Best Sellers Rank: #1,162,311 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #486 in Biographies of Hoaxes & Deceptions
- #1,136 in Educator Biographies
- #1,239 in Biographies of Christianity

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4.0 37 ratings

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Adam Sisman

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Adam Sisman is a writer specialising in biography, living in Bristol, England. His second book, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, won a National Books Critics Circle award. "Mr. Sisman has an ideal biographical style: inquisitive and open, serious yet not severe," Dwight Garner wrote of Sisman's life of Hugh Trevor-Roper in the New York Times: "I’d read him on anyone.”

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Richard Mammana

One of the most exquisite of recent clergy biographies

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2024

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One dimension of Sisman’s book I found so intriguing was the involvement in the story of Hugh Trevor-Roper, the major academic English historian of Nazi Germany as well as of seventeenth century English studies until his death in 2003. Trevor-Roper contemplated a biography of Peters because he was a committed opponent of Christianity and saw in Peters some proof in the pudding of his own secularism. Trevor-Roper compiled a large dossier of material on the fraudster during their overlapping years at Oxford, using letters, telegrams, newspaper clippings and journal articles from almost five decades to flesh out a tale of ecclesiomania with few more complete exemplars. He abandoned the project of chronicling Peters when his own academic reputation was damaged over his involvement in authenticating 60 fake volumes of diaries by Adolf Hitler that had been fabricated by a West German lunch voucher forger in the early 1980s.

Our author Sisman inherited the Trevor-Roper papers on Bishop Peters the degree-less degree-maker, and the result is a somehow elegant and captivating read about the churchly extremes of personality disorders. This is not just another book about criminous clerks, one of the favorite genres of English anti-hagiography. It is a story in some sense about childhood poverty and illness combined with ambition and gullibility, all rooted in the now-lost significance of religious studies as a source of social prestige. Peters found in academic dress regalia and church vestments a replacement or cover for his own lifelong insecurities; all of the marriages he took the time to have annulled were invalidated on the grounds of impotence.

Sisman has given us a new installment of the seam begun in 1934 by A.J.A. Symons in The Quest for Corvo. The investigation is as thorough as it is amusing and intriguing, frustrating at every turn, and in the end full of an incomparable sadness: the perfect end-of-summer beach-read.—Richard Mammana, Medium.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Entertaining but a little too jumbled in structure

Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2020

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Sisman portrays the almost unbelievable life of a serial liar, fraud, charlatan, bigamist, defrocked priest, and wannabe scholar. Lots of this is hilarious and sad at the same time. One problem with the narrative is it skips around time-wise an awful lot. Hard to keep track. Also pretty repetitive in spots. One thing that is never explained is how this guy who kept getting fired and sometimes deported from continent to continent could afford all the incredible world travel he engaged in. Readers who know a lot about the UK university system will understand some of the more cryptic references that pervade the book. I had to keep googling. All in all, though, a very entertaining read about a very incredible man.

2 people found this helpful

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Farrell Brown

Not an easy read.

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2020

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An interesting topic but a bit heavy in academic credentialing.

One person found this helpful

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NJMaggie

fascinating book

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2024

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I’ve read this book three times and it is very interesting. How a person could have gotten away with this chicanery is beyond comprehension. Even though he could never keep a job, you have to admire the ease with which he could get jobs.

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2020

Verified Purchase

The story seems too far fetched to be true and then you realize this is a real person and you read on. Well researched and documented.

Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2021