Scottish Catholic Observer

Mr Cottrell Boyce (above), who won a Carnegie-medal for his novel Millions—about a boy who is obsessed with saints—had a captive audience at the lecture, an initiative of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales’ Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis.

This year’s lecture is the first of three that will be delivered annually between 2011-2013 focusing on three aspects of Cardinal Newman’s gifting highlighted by Pope Benedict XVI in the beatification homily: preaching, teaching, and writing.

Developing the theme A footling little parson: The greatest of English prose writers, the author focused tonight on the craft of writing, exploring the source of a writer’s creativity and inspiration.

Millions was turned into a film by Danny Boyle in 2004. Mr Cottrell Boyce also wrote the BBC play God on Trial which dramatised the apocryphal trial of God which was— supposedly—staged by a group of rabbis in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He recently penned the official sequel to the children’s novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and he is currently working with Danny Boyle on the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games and in September 2011 delivered a BAFTA lecture.

The author, born in Liverpool to an Irish Catholic family, has repeatedly said that he does not see how anyone can believe in God without taking part in organised religion.

“God said—and He should know ‘wherever two or three are gathered in My name.’ Anyone who says different is just wrong,” he says in Peter Stanford’s book Why I Am Still a Catholic: Essays in Faith and Perseverance.

Mr Cottrell Boyce is also in awe of the Catholic community.

“A parish is an amazing thing,” he said. “Nowadays everyone is fretting about social fragmentation. If you go to a Catholic parish on a Sunday you’ll see the opposite of that.”

Bishop Kieran Conry, chairman of the Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis, said: “Cardinal Newman was a very imaginative writer whose works not only influenced theological debate but he also left a treasure for people of all faiths and none in his hymns, prayers and meditations. The aim of the first Newman Lecture is to affirm the craft of writing and stimulate reflection and discussion about what makes for good writing and where does creativity and inspiration find its source.”

Find photographs from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/catholicism