Before Robert Harris's Conclave, there was this 1960s blockbuster
The opening tolls like a Vatican bell: 'The Pope was dead. The camerlengo had announced it. The master of ceremonies, the notaries, the doctors had consigned him under signature into eternity. His ring was defaced and his seals were broken.'
The death of Pope Francis sent me back 60 years to Morris West's orotund, unlikely global bestseller and its evocation of pontifical sendoff: the triple coffin, nine-day mourning and awed emptiness of 'sede vacante' as cardinals flock to the Sistine Chapel. Robert Harris's Conclave has lately given us all a vivid glimpse of it, with remarkable insight into the top layer of Catholicism, but it is fascinating to return to stronger meat, The Shoes of the Fisherman. Its author, West, an Australian novelist, was
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