Biblioracle: British satirist David Lodge dies at 89. His work will inform our world for years to come.

Remembering David Lodge: Author, Agnostic, and Consummate Chameleon

By the time the novelist David Lodge died on January 1 at the age of 89, the obituaries had long been written, gathering dust and occasional updates in the as-needed folder on the desktops of magazine and newspaper editors. And when they were published in the days after New Year’s, they struck an am...

Biblioracle: British satirist David Lodge dies at 89. His work will inform our world for years to come.

David Lodge, British author of perhaps the greatest works of campus satire of all-time, died on Jan. 1, 2025, at age 89, surrounded by his family at his home in Birmingham, England. I first read Lodge 30 years ago, when I was assigned the opening installment of his campus trilogy, “Changing Places” (followed later by “Small World” and “Nice Work”) as part of a graduate course in the English novel. It became perhaps my favorite book over my three…

RIP David Lodge, a Catholic novelist who taught us how to laugh at ourselves

On New Year’s Day 2025, British Catholic novelist and literary critic David Lodge died at the age of 89. A professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham until his retirement in 1987, Lodge has a firm place among both campus novelists and Catholic writers. While he did not quite reach the rank of such British Catholic novelists as Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark or Graham Greene, Lodge still must be considered one of Britain’s finest…