Joseph Pearce (born February 12, 1961), is an English-born American writer, and Director of the Center for Faith and Culture at Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee, before which he held positions at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan and Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida. Formerly aligned with the National Front, a white supremacist group, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1989, repudiated his earlier views, and now writes from a Catholic perspective and espouses Monarchism and Catholic Social Teaching. He is a co-editor of the St. Austin Review and editor-in-chief of Sapientia Press. He also teaches Shakespearian literature for an online Catholic curriculum provider. Pearce has written biographies of literary figures, often Christian, including William Shakespeare, J. R. R. Tolkien, Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Hilaire Belloc. His books have been translated into at least nine languages. Biography Early life Joseph Pearce was born in Barking, London, and brought up in Haverhill, Suffolk. His father, Albert Arthur Pearce, was a heavy drinker with a history of brawling in pubs with Irishmen and non-Whites, had an encyclopedic knowledge of English poetry and British military history, and an intense nostalgia for the vanished British Empire. In 1973 the family moved to Barking in the East End of London, so that the Pearce boys would grow up with Cockney accents. Pearce had been a compliant pupil at the school in Haverhill, but at Eastbury comprehensive school in Barking he led the racist disruption of the lessons taught by a young Pakistani British mathematics teacher. Neo-Nazism At 15, Pearce joined the youth wing of the National Front, an anti-Semitic and white supremacist political party advocating the compulsory repatriation of all immigrants and British-born non-Whites. He came to prominence in 1977 when he set up Bulldog, the NF's openly racist newspaper. Like his father, Pearce became an enthusiastic supporter of Ulster Loyalism during the Troubles from 1978, and joined the Orange Order, a militantly anti-Catholic secret society closely linked to Ulster Loyalist paramilitary organizations. In 1980, he became editor of Nationalism Today, advocating white supremacy. Pearce was twice prosecuted and imprisoned under the Race Relations Act of 1976 for his writings, in 1981 and 1985. At one stage, he contacted John Tyndall to suggest coalition talks with the British National Party, but Tyndall rejected the plan. Pearce