Hadrian the Seventh, by Fr. Rolfe

I've just finished reading this (though not in this particular edition), which has sat on my shelf for ages. It is, famously, a wish-fulfilment fantasy by failed aspirant priest Frederick Rolfe, in which the Roman Church changes its mind about ordaining George Arthur Rose, the character who represents Rolfe himself, having spurned him for twenty years during which time he has eked out a wretched living as a journalist and other things. Rose is then almost accidentally elected Pope and proceeds to reward his friends and punish his enemies, purge the Church of its wealth, its aspirations to secular power and its 'Keltic' influence, and then carve up the political settlement of the globe, re-erecting the Holy Roman Empire in the process.

It's a fascinating mixture of some quite good writing and some god-awful rubbish. There are passages where Hadrian becomes almost believable, though barely anybody else is. Rolfe clearly hated the Irish and the Scots (and there's a bit where Hadrian denounces, pontifically, any attempt to retain the Welsh language on the grounds that the Welsh are a conquered race and so don't deserve it), and in fact hated most Roman Catholics too. But most of all he hates anyone on the political Left, and his depiction of villainous Socialists as the most venal, ignorant, self-seeking and corrupt semi-human beings you can conceive is virtually unworthy of being committed to print. An enchantingly pathological book.