
Often scathingly funny, frequently tender, and always completely engaging, The Gatekeeper is Terry Eagleton's memoirs, his deep-etched portraits of those who influenced him, either by example or by contrast: his father, headmasters, priests, and Cambridge dons. He was a shy,...

Oxford professor, best-selling author, preeminent literary critic, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Terry Eagleton knows all about the claims of competing worlds. One of his earliest roles growing up Catholic in Protestant England was as "the gatekeeper"-the altar boy...


A memoir in which our hero blends autobiography with moral, political and cultural reflections. thoughts about god, evil, suffering, death and tragedy are interwoven with comic or moving scenes from the author's life; his bizarre experiences as a young altar server in a convent...