About Us

Thirty Years of Catholic Publishing, 1996–2026

Saint Austin Press was founded in Southampton in 1996 by Ferdi McDermott, in anticipation of the 1,400th anniversary of the arrival of St Augustine of Canterbury in Kent in 597. Known to earlier generations of English Catholics as “St Austin”, Augustine was sent by Pope St Gregory the Great to restore the Christian faith among the English. His Roman fidelity, missionary courage and sympathetic understanding of England’s traditions made him a natural patron for the new Press.

The Inspiration of St Austin

The principles which guided Augustine’s mission are preserved in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People by the Venerable Bede. When Augustine sought guidance from Rome, Pope Gregory counselled him to draw upon whatever was good, devout and fitting in the customs he encountered. “Things are not to be loved for the sake of places,” Gregory explained, “but places for the sake of good things.”

This generous missionary wisdom extended to the inherited customs of the English people. Gregory advised that well-built pagan temples should not simply be destroyed, but cleansed and consecrated as churches. Traditional gatherings and feasts might continue, but with a new Christian purpose. Instead of offering cattle in sacrifice to pagan gods, the people could gather in shelters made from branches around their churches on the feasts of the saints, giving thanks to God and sharing the animals in a common meal.

This combination of fidelity to Rome, reverence for tradition and affection for the particular history and culture of a people has inspired Saint Austin Press from the beginning. The Press seeks to present the Catholic Faith not as something alien to European civilisation, but as the source from which much of its literature, art, learning and common life has grown.

The Early Years

After its foundation in Southampton, Saint Austin Press moved to London, where Ferdi McDermott was joined by Robert Asch. With the help of a number of friends and supporters, they developed an independent Catholic publishing house and bookshop. Between 1998 and 2002, Robert and Ferdi worked together on a growing list encompassing theology, spirituality, liturgy, literature, history and the lives of the saints.

The Press also gave a permanent form to the proceedings of the international liturgical colloquia of the Centre International d’Études Liturgiques (CIEL), publishing several volumes of their papers.

The bookshop in Brockley, London, c. 2000.

Some of our early publications.

In 2002, both men moved to France to help establish Saint Austin International College, now Chavagnes International College, an international Catholic boarding school for boys. Ferdi remains its Headmaster today.

Robert met his future wife, Ruth, in France. They married and now have a large family. Robert and Ruth taught at the College for ten years before returning to the United Kingdom, while Robert continued his editorial and scholarly work.

The Saint Austin Review

In 2001, the Press founded a new journal of Catholic culture and ideas: the Saint Austin Review, familiarly known as StAR.

First published in September 2001, the Saint Austin Review has now appeared for more than twenty-five years. Although it is today published separately in the United States, Robert Asch and Ferdi McDermott remain involved in its work. Robert continues as co-editor with Joseph Pearce.

A New Beginning

In 2021, Saint Austin Press began a new chapter, with renewed energy and a clearer sense of its particular vocation.

The principal work of the Press today is to bring neglected Catholic classics back into print: books which deserve to be presented anew to modern readers in handsome, carefully typeset editions, often accompanied by new introductions, forewords and scholarly notes. These are works which have helped to form Catholic intellectual and spiritual life and which should not be allowed to disappear.

Alongside this work of recovery, Saint Austin Press continues to publish selected works of modern scholarship, literary research and devotional writing. Robert Asch has published through the Press a substantial study of the Catholic poet Lionel Johnson, while Ferdi McDermott is preparing several literary and historical works for publication in 2027.

An Apostolate of Education

Saint Austin Press has always understood publishing as an apostolate of education. Its work belongs to the same vision that inspired the foundation of the school in France: the formation of intelligent, cultivated and faithful Catholic laymen and women.

This is, in essence, Newman’s dream of an educated laity—readers capable of understanding their inheritance, defending the Faith intelligently and contributing with confidence to the culture around them.

As Saint Austin Press celebrates thirty happy years of publishing, it looks forward with gratitude and confidence to the next thirty: recovering the treasures of the past, encouraging the scholarship of the present and helping to renew Catholic intellectual and cultural life for the future.