Charles A. Coulombe

Charles A. Coulombe was born in Manhattan on the day JFK was elected – November 8, 1960. His parents were actors, and six years later the family moved to Hollywood, California, taking up residence in an apartment building owned by Criswell, the then famed television psychic. Depending upon their financial fortunes, Coulombe went to a mixture of private and public schools in the Los Angeles area, attending college at New Mexico Military Institute and Cal State-Northridge. Spending three years on the Sunset strip as a standup comic, his first book, Everyman Today Call Rome appeared in 1986. The succeeding three decades have been spent writing books and articles, lecturing, and – in recent years – dealing with the internet. He has debated before the Oxford Union, spoken at universities across the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand – and on one memorable occasion in 1999, was trapped with his audience in the former Royal Palace in Bucharest by Papal security. This did, however, allow him to see the future St. John Paul II from above. Coulombe also found himself on one occasion attending a church service with Michael Jackson.

From the decidedly mixed background has come an equally mixed range of interests - Catholicism, comparative religions, literature, cinema, folklore and mythology, Monarchy, heraldry, wildlife conservation, historical preservation, Indian lore (he does not use the politically correct term “Native American,” having been told repeatedly on reservations how offensive Indians outside academia, media, and politics find it) and on and on. Coulombe serves on the boards of the Queen of Angels Foundation and the Canadian Royal Heritage Trust, and is the Western United States representative of the International Monarchist League. He is or has been a member of the Knights of Columbus, the Knights of Peter Claver, the Newman Club of Los Angeles, the British United Services Club of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, the City Tavern Club, the Mythopoeic Society, the Masquers Club, the Green Room Club of London, the Catholic Writers Guild of Great Britain (the Keys), the Royal Stuart Society, the Irish Georgian Society, the Association Canado-Americaine, and a number of others.

Coulombe would describe himself as a “Generalist.” “Being a Catholic of French descent, living in a city founded by the Spanish, born in one founded by the Dutch, in a country of British political origins – how could I be otherwise?” But despite the eclectic nature of his work, he himself sees it all as embodying a consistent point of view. The truth of that his readers may decide for themselves!

Mr. Coulombe has a weekly podcast called Off the Menu where people ask him all sorts of questions on religion, culture, politics and history.