The Tablet is a Catholic weekly journal that has been published continually since 1840. It reports on religion current affairs, politics, social issues, literature and the arts with a special emphasis on Roman Catholicism while remaining ecumenical. It is committed to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. Contributors to its pages have included Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and Pope Paul VI, as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini. More recently theologians such as Fr Hans Küng, Professors Eamon Duffy and Nicholas Lash, and Dr Rowan Williams and Jane Williams have written for the publication, along with figures such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Cornwell, Stephen Hough and David Willcocks. It was launched in 1840 by a Quaker convert to Catholicism, Frederick Lucas, and is the second-oldest surviving weekly journal in Britain after The Spectator, which was founded in 1828. For 67 years it was in the possession of successive archbishops of Westminster. Since 1976 it has been owned by The Tablet Trust, a registered charity. Its trustees include Lord Patten, Baroness Shirley Williams, Baroness Helena Kennedy and Edward Stourton. The editor of The Tablet is Brendan Walsh, who was was previously Head of Communications at Cafod and Publishing Director of Darton, Longman & Todd before joining The Tablet in 2011 as Literary Editor. His home parish is St Austin’s, Wakefield, and he was educated at Austin Friars School, Carlisle. His first job in publishing was with the Catholic Truth Society and he was also an editor with SPCK Publishing.
