on the papacy. Both Confessions of a Convert (1913) and Lourdes (1914) were serialized in Notre Dame's Ave Maria magazine, before appearing as books. He was awarded the Dignitary of Honour of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Novelist Benson continued his writing career along with his ministry as a priest. Like both his brothers, Edward Frederic Benson ("Fred") and Arthur Christopher Benson, Robert wrote many ghost and horror stories, as well as children's stories and historical fiction. His horror and ghost fiction are collected in The Light Invisible (1903) and A Mirror of Shallott (1907). His novel, Lord of the World (1907), is generally regarded as one of the first modern dystopian novels. In the speculative 2007 he predicted there, the Anglican Church and other Protestant denominations have crumbled and disappeared under a rising tide of secularism and atheism, leaving an embattled Catholic Church as the sole champion of Christian truth. Nations are armed with weapons which can destroy a whole city from the air within minutes, and euthanasia is widely practiced and considered as a moral advance. The Antichrist is depicted as a charismatic secular liberal who organizes an international body devoted to world peace and love under his direction. In his next novel The Dawn of All (1911), Benson imagined an opposite future 1973 in which the Catholic Church has emerged victorious in England and worldwide after Germany and Austria won the "Emperor War" of 1914; this book is also notable in its fairly accurate prediction of a global network of a passenger air travel. Come Rack! Come Rope! (1912) is a historical novel describing the persecution of English Catholics during the Elizabethan era. The bibliography below reveals a prodigious output. Among his historical novels is the Reformation Trilogy: By What Authority (1905), The King’s Achievement (1905), and The Queen’s Tragedy (1907). Vatican chaplaincy Benson was appointed a supernumerary private chamberlain to the Pope (Pius X) in 1911 and consequently styled as Monsignor. Private life As a young man, Benson recalled, he had rejected the idea of marriage as "quite inconceivable". He had a close friendship with "Baron Corvo," the alias of the novelist Frederick Rolfe, with whom he had hoped to write a book on St Thomas Becket, until Benson decided that he should not be associated (according to writer Brian Masters) "with a Venetian pimp and procurer of boys". Nevertheless, he maintained his friendship with