Dame

Dame

A Dame may be:* Dame , a female title of rank, equivalent to 'Sir' used as the title of a knight* A title of respect for certain Benedictine nuns equivalent to the male "Dom"* A pantomime dame...

 Felicitas Corrigan OSB

Order of Saint Benedict

The Order of Saint Benedict is a Roman Catholic religious order of independent monastic communities that observe the Rule of St. Benedict. Within the order, each individual community maintains its own autonomy, while the organization as a whole exists to represent their mutual interests...

 (6 March 1908 - 7 October 2003) was an English Benedictine

Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 nun

Nun

A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...

, author and humanitarian.

She was born Kathleen Corrigan into a large Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

 family, and developed a talent as an organist

Organist

An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...

. In 1933, she entered Stanbrook Abbey

Stanbrook Abbey

Stanbrook Abbey is an abbey built as a contemplative house for Benedictine nuns. It was founded in 1625 in Cambrai, Flanders, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, under the auspices of the English Benedictine Congregation.-History:...

 in Worcestershire

Worcestershire

Worcestershire is a non-metropolitan county, established in antiquity, located in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region...

 as a nun, and eventually became director of its choir. One of her projects was to develop an English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version of the office of Compline

Compline

Compline is the final church service of the day in the Christian tradition of canonical hours. The English word Compline is derived from the Latin completorium, as Compline is the completion of the working day. The word was first used in this sense about the beginning of the 6th century by St...

 for the abbey. In the course of her career, Dame Felicitas befriended and/or corresponded with several famous figures who converted to Catholicism, including poet Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...

, actor Alec Guinness

Alec Guinness

Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE was an English actor. He was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. He later won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai...

; and novelist Rumer Godden

Rumer Godden

Margaret Rumer Godden OBE was an English author of over 60 fiction and nonfiction books written under the name of Rumer Godden. A few of her works were co-written by her sister, Jon Godden, who wrote several novels on her own...

.

Dame Felicitas' biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

 of Helen Waddell

Helen Waddell

Helen Jane Waddell was an Irish poet, translator and playwright.-Biography:She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her...

 was awarded the 1986 James Tait Black Memorial Prize

James Tait Black Memorial Prize

Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...

. Her book, The Nun, the Infidel, and the Superman, inspired by the life of Laurentia McLachlan

Laurentia McLachlan

Dame Laurentia McLachlan, OSB was born in 1866 in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland. In 1884 she joined the Benedictine Abbey at Stanbrook Abbey. In 1931 she was elected Abbess of Stanbrook...

, was turned into a play

The Best of Friends (play)

The Best of Friends is an epistolary play by Hugh Whitemore about the friendship of George Bernard Shaw, Sydney Cockerell, and Dame Laurentia McLachlan, based in the lengthy correspondence that passed between them for over 25 years...

 by Hugh Whitemore

Hugh Whitemore

Hugh Whitemore is an English playwright and screenwriter.Whitemore studied for the stage at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he is now a Member of the Council. He began his writing career in British television with both original teleplays and adaptations of classic works by Charles...

 and later became a film for television

The Best of Friends (play)

The Best of Friends is an epistolary play by Hugh Whitemore about the friendship of George Bernard Shaw, Sydney Cockerell, and Dame Laurentia McLachlan, based in the lengthy correspondence that passed between them for over 25 years...

 starring Wendy Hiller

Wendy Hiller

Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...

. She also wrote about other figures in whom she was interested, including Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen

Blessed Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and...

 and the poet Coventry Patmore

Coventry Patmore

Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore was an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage.-Youth:...

. She also edited publications for the Stanbrook Abbey Press. Other works include:

• In a Great Tradition (1956)
• George Thomas of Soho (1970)
• Siegfried Sassoon: Poet's Pilgrimage (1973)
• Benedictine Tapestry (1991)

Dame Felicitas was Stanbrook Abbey's organist from 1933 until 1990. She died at Cheltenham

Cheltenham

Cheltenham , also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a large spa town and borough in Gloucestershire, on the edge of the Cotswolds in the South-West region of England. It is the home of the flagship race of British steeplechase horse racing, the Gold Cup, the main event of the Cheltenham Festival held...

.