The publication of both volumes of Miss Trevor's Life of Newman together with the first two volumes of the definitive edition of his diaries and letters edited by Fr Stephen Dessain has brought much thinking about Newman out into the open. Reviewing Miss Trevor’s book, the Observer found Newman ‘somewhat unappealing’, ‘ambiguous’, ‘hard to pin down’, and ‘self-pitying’; but the most startling judgment was made at the conclusion of the Times’ review: Newman, we were told, ‘was not a lasting force like Fox or Wesley … It was his deepest convictions that were most antipathetic to what may broadly be called the English genius’. Miss Trevor has herself been criticized for bringing in too much everyday detail about, for example, Newman’s troubles with Faber and Dalgairns, for avoiding much of that treatment of Newman's ideas which is the special feature of the previous and still invaluable Life by Ward, and for making it plain that she believes Newman to have been right and Wiseman, Manning, Faber and Co., wrong.