Fr Seed - A New Fr Martindale

In the early 20th century, Father C. C. Martindale acquired a reputation for ushering notable English converts into the Catholic Church like Alistair Graham and Ronald Knox.

Today, Father Michael Seed seems to be filling those shoes.

Father Michael Seed may be, according to his great friend Ann Widdecombe, whom he received into the Catholic Church, "the missionary to celebrities", but his office is a modest, untidy, basement broom-cupboard.

And an overheated one at that, caused, he explains as he shows me in, by the hot water pipes that pass across the low ceiling en route to warm up his boss, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who presides above stairs in Archbishop's House, a huge, dark pile in Victoria that is about as welcoming as a faded railway hotel in a period of national mourning.

There is, in this subterranean den, just about space for two chairs. They are tucked between the mini organ that, Father Seed reveals, someone has dumped in here, and the desk, which has a telephone lead going into a closed drawer. "It's the only way to get any peace," he says, sitting down in one of the chairs.

Father Seed is a boyish 50-year-old priest with tousled hair, permanently red cheeks, a genial manner and a reputation for making converts to Catholicism. As well as the formidable Miss Widdecombe, his name has been linked (sometimes erroneously, but we'll come to that) with the reception into his Church of John Gummer, the Duchess of Kent, Alan Clark and – most recently – Tony Blair. Read all ...