(Maurice) Christopher Hollis was born on March 29, 1902, the second son of Reverend Arthur Hollis, Anglican Bishop of Taunton. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford in England. He held the position of president of the Oxford Union and from 1924 to 1925, he toured the United States, New Zealand, and Australia as a member of the Oxford Union Debating Society. Hollis was received into the Catholic Church in 1924 and published his first book, Glastonbury and England, in 1927. He married Margaret Madeline (Maddie) King in 1929, with whom he had four children. From 1925-1935, he was assistant master at Stonyhurst and from 1935-1939, he lectured and did research in the United States and Canada.
Hollis was an economist, scholar, historian, biographer, lecturer, and journalist. He was a Conservative member of the British Parliament from 1945-1955 and also served with the Royal Air Force in World War II. He served as a member of the editorial board of the London Tablet and published many works during his lifetime, including American Heresy (1927), Two Nations (1935), and biographies of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh. His last book, Oxford in the Twenties: Recollections of Five Friends, was published a year before his death in 1977.
