The Professor and the Parson
A Story of Desire, Deceit and Defrocking
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction
'I embarrassed myself by uncontrollable guffaws ... This is a truly wonderful story' A. N. Wilson, Spectator
'A white-knuckle roller-coaster ride of fibs and frauds' Sunday Telegraph
'An utterly mad, and wholly delightful story of chicanery and fantasy' Simon Winchester
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 traces the strange career of one of Britain's most eccentric criminals. 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, Singapore and South Africa. Frequently deported, and even more frequently discovered, his trail of destruction included seven marriages (three of which were bigamous), an investigation by the FBI and a disastrous appearance on Mastermind.
Based on Trevor-Roper's own detailed 'file on Peters', The Professor and the Parson is a witty and charming account of eccentricity, extraordinary narcissism and a life as wild and unlikely as any in fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gripping account of a recalcitrant 20th-century con man from National Book Critics Circle Award winner Sisman (Boswell's Presumptuous Task) proves the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. The man born Robert Parkins in England in 1918, who mostly went by Robert Peters, first forged references to get a teaching post in Canada in 1948. In 1958, British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who became notorious in the 1970s for being taken in by the fake Hitler diaries, met Peters in Oxford while the latter was a grad student at the university. After Peters asked for his help countering persecution by the bishop of Oxford, Trevor-Roper discovered that Peters's claim was a fantasy and began digging deeper. The historian's interest in the scam artist continued for the rest of his life, and Sisman details Peters's persistent and successful attempts to pass himself off as variously an academic, cleric, and school principal. Sisman wisely relegates speculation about what motivated Peters to a brief concluding section, offering appropriate caveats about why Peters sought status via deceit "when it might have been easier to pursue an honest career." Fans of the film Catch Me If You Can will be entertained.)
