It was traditional for its preface to be written anonymously and to take a slightly waspish, if detached and amused, look at events in the church since the previous edition.
Bennett consciously took a different tack on the article and, from a conservative viewpoint, wrote a carefully constructed demolition of the hierarchy of the Church of England, which he himself described as "wicked".
While the explosive nature of the article in ecclesiastical circles might have been predicted, the secular press turned the issue into front-page news.
After a number of days of fevered speculation, it emerged that Bennett was the anonymous author and the last entries in his diary make clear that he was finding the attentions of the tabloid press increasingly difficult to cope with.
[citation needed] At the time Bennett wrote his preface (which covers a wider range of topics than the disproportionate amount of coverage given to the "An Archbishop in toils" section suggests), opposition to the ordination of women to the priesthood had not been centralised – the traditionalist group Forward in Faith did not become established until 1992.
[13] From Carpenter's portrait, Bennett emerges on the one hand as a distinguished academic and cleric, but on the other as a reclusive lonely man who could not cope with the spotlight when it fell upon him.