Crispian Hollis - Family Life

Family Life

Both his parents were received into the Roman Catholic Church. He is possibly unique among Catholic bishops in being the grandson of an Anglican bishop, George Arthur Hollis (1868–1944), vice-principal of Wells Theological College and later bishop-suffragan of Taunton, and the nephew of another, the Right Revd Arthur Michael Hollis, Bishop of Madras (1942-1954).

Having worked as a lecturer of Church History at the United Theological College, Bangalore, 1955–1960, Bishop Arthur Michael Hollis, served in his last years as Rector of Todwick and an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Sheffield. Hollis, however, was the son of Arthur Hollis's brother, Christopher Hollis, an Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford educated writer, wartime Royal Air Force intelligence officer and later Tory Member of Parliament for Devizes. Christopher Hollis was a friend of Ronald Knox and Evelyn Waugh and in 1924 became a Roman Catholic, as Knox had already done and as Waugh did later. Not only that, but Hollis's uncle, after whom he was named, was Sir Roger Henry Hollis, another son of Bishop George Hollis and younger brother to Hollis’s father. Roger Hollis, described by Evelyn Waugh as "a good bottle man", abandoned studies at Worcester College, Oxford for a wandering life which led him, Christopher Hollis, into the intelligence world. Roger Hollis joined MI5 (the Security Service) shortly before World War II and, in 1956, became its Director General, exciting suspicions of his being a Soviet agent and mole, codenamed “Elli”, though various investigations, including the lengthy Trend Committee of the 1970s under Lord Trend, decided the allegations inconclusive, neither denying nor confirming them. Hollis’s younger cousin, Adrian Hollis, son of Roger Hollis, is a Grandmaster of correspondence chess and was British Correspondence Chess Champion in 1966, 1967 and 1971.