Word: knoxs
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...reticence of the confirmed pipe smoker, for the British often use their pipes as stoppers to save them the trouble of opening their mouths, even choosing the slowest tobaccos to keep them quiet. In a series of Oxford dialogues which appear in his Let Dons Delight, Knox makes a personal appearance, but his remarks are only indicated on the printed page by a series of dots. His conversation is not always as reserved as that, but when he does intervene with a witticism, his silent laughter suggests apology or even pain, rather than amusement...
...ordinary and unobtrusive: even his humor has been an exercise in humility, leading some to undervalue his serious work. But being unobtrusive was always hard, for, even at Eton and Oxford, he bagged his limit in prizes. His father was Bishop of Manchester. His brother was editor of Punch. Knox came from the old governing class and tried loyally to be the silent and sensible Briton that Eton and Oxford existed to produce. In 1912 he was ordained a priest in the Church of England; in 1917 he entered the Roman Catholic Church...
FIRM IN HIS own convictions, he has a deep respect for those of others, as a reporter found who came to him hoping for a strong statement on the rise of Dr. Buchman's "Moral Re-Armament" movement. All he received was a note, ringed around with Knox's usual qualifications ("It's possible that . . . I'm inclined to think . . ."), to the effect that a more emotional approach to religion was due, as there had not been one for over half a century. This is Knox's pet subject and for 30 years his secret...
...conscience and his humor are always breaking the surface of convention. This unobtrusive cleric, when teaching at a seminary, left the high table to sit with the students, in protest at the inferior food they were getting. That is Knox, a modest and conscientious breaker of the peace...
...whodunits (the most ingenious has the Knoxious title Double Cross-Purposes) are less theological than Chesterton's Father Brown stories. It is not true, as has been said, that you can always spot the murderer because he is sure to be a Catholic-though that too would be Knox all over; he would think it arrogant to make the hero a Catholic. Yet the London paper which once said "his chief interest in life is detective novels" certainly underestimated the intensity of his faith...