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

by Adam Sisman

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781640093287
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	02/04/2020
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Introduction 3

Part I 1958-9

1 In which the professor meets the parson and hears his history 11

2 In which the parson is ejected from Oxford 25

Part II 1959-83

3 In which the professor studies the parson's past 41

4 In which the parson pledges to do better 57

5 In which the parson finds a saviour 79

6 In which the parson does some silly things 101

7 In which the parson appoints himself principal 119

8 In which the professor comes a cropper 141

Part III 1983-2005

9 The apartheid parson 163

10 In which the parson appoints himself principal (reprise) 171

Epilogue 197

Conclusion: Person parson 201

Chronology 205

Acknowledgements 217

Index 219

List of Illustrations 233

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/16/2019

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. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

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

From the Publisher

2019-10-27
An astonishing story of decades of deception by a slithery English academic and cleric.

It was during his research for his 2010 biography of noted English scholar Hugh Trevor-Roper that Sisman (John le Carré, 2015, etc.) came across a dossier that Trevor-Roper had assembled on Robert Parkin Peters (born in 1918 as Robert Michael Parkins), who, from young manhood on, tried (and sometimes succeeded—though never for very long) to establish himself as an academic scholar and theologian. He had in fact been ordained, and he had obtained some degrees, but never the weighty ones he claimed at various times to have earned. He also married multiple times (at least seven), was imprisoned for bigamy and deported from the United States and Canada, made moves on about every woman who wandered into his orbit, and was exposed as a fraud in newspapers. Somehow, however, he slid along, moving from position to position. He lied, plagiarized, stole, and fled his debts, jumping from country to country. In the era before Google, it sometimes took employers a long time to learn the truth about him and fire him—or defrock him and otherwise attempt to clip his wings, which always grew back very quickly. Peters was a small, nondescript man—the photographs show him looking a little like Mister Peepers—but he was utterly convincing in his various guises. Trevor-Roper's dossier ended abruptly in 1983 when he was humiliated by the Hitler diaries scandal (he had innocently authenticated the forgeries), and Sisman had to do some diligent digging on his own to unearth the rest of this jaw-dropping tale. The author speculates only modestly about why Peters behaved as he did, but he concludes that he was a classic narcissist. "Studying Peters," writes Sisman, "is like tracking a particle in a cloud chamber: usually one cannot see the man himself, but only the path he left behind." The appended chronology is also incredible.

A captivating true tale that makes even the most intricate con-artist movies look cartoonish.

Kirkus Reviews