For many years, and indeed almost till the end of his life, Bede Jarrett was to me a remote though beneficent figure; important and attractive but in the background. I never heard him preach; I had never read even one of his books; I met him personally but once and then had not the opportunity of conversing with him. I was, however, deeply interested in the striking expansion of the Dominican Order in England, both on account of men whom I knew among its younger generation, and because I saw the valuable impression that the O.P.s were making on English Catholic life and thought.