Michael De La Bedoyere
(Michael de la Bedoyere, being the Editor, insists upon giving his own description of himself.)
" [D1TORS SHOULD RESIST
I. the temptation to use the pages of their papers in order to put themselves across. Do you know anything about the Editor of ' The Times '? The obscurity that is good enough for him should be good enough for me. Hence I have so far resisted the temptation to include myself in the series
' Meet the C.H. writers.' If my resistance breaks down at the eleventh hour it is because of one consideration only: the degree of perplexity and misunderstanding caused by the name I bear.
" My name is French, and it 'eV seems difficult to pronounce, and readers sometimes wonder why a foreigner edits the ' Catholic Herald.' So troublesome is my name that I am sometimes tempted to change it, but, as such a step might suggest that I am ashamed of my name, I have not done so.
" In point of fact I am very proud of my name, which is that of a Breton family, one of two of whose members have managed to secure rather small niches in the history of the country which bears the name of ' the eldest daughter of the Church.' It looks quite nice, and when properly pronounced (three English words: bed, why, air) sounds quite nice.
" As regards actual blood, however, I am a quarter French and threequarters British. Britain is my country. I have lived all my life in Britain, and I even speak French with an English accent. I hope, however, that my mixed ancestry helps me to have a mind that is not wholly bounded by the seas which surround Great Britain. Christianity is not so bounded, and if is well to try to see with Christian as well as British eyes.
" Having said enough about myself as is important for readers of the ' Catholic Herald ' to know, I beg leave to relapse into the obscurity of ' Editor of the Catholic Herald.' "