Russell Sparkes has a long-standing interest in both Catholic Social Teaching, and G.K. Chesterton and the Distributist movement. A former Chairman of the Chesterton Institute, in 1995 together with Stratford Caldecott he founded the Sane Economy project of the Centre for Faith & Culture. His books include: Prophet of Orthodoxy—the Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton (Harper Collins, 1997), Sound of Heaven—a Treasury of Catholic Verse (St Pauls, 2001), and Cardinal Manning and the Birth of Catholic Social Teaching (CTS, 2012).