The Aquinas Society of London came into existence naturally and, so to say, insensiblement among a little group of students who had been attending the pioneer lectures on the Summa Theologica that were given some twenty years ago by Father Vincent McNabb, O.P., at St. Peter’s Hut, Westminster, under the auspices of the University Extension Board.

Soon after the last war Father Vincent had conceived the idea of making the doctrine of Aquinas available to ordinary lay men and women. It was an immense and individual act of charity on the part of a poor friar who endeavoured in this way to share his intellectual riches and the special inheritance of his Order with lay folk for whom no other means of Catholic intellectual formation existed at the time. The success of these lectures on the Summa led in a short while to an expansion of the work, and in a few years three series of lectures on Theology and Ethics, and the History of Medieval Philosophy and a series on the Scriptures were being given by the Dominican Fathers at St. Peter’s Hut. Among the students who attended these courses of lectures were some who were destined in the course of years to occupy office and authority in the State. Who shall tell the full story of the influence these courses had on the lives of individuals and on the public life of the community?