Independent Bookshop Week 19 - 26 June 2021

 

Empress Bianca by Lady Colin Campbell

Paperback: Empress Bianca (2008) is a window into the lives of the wealthiest people in the world. It chronicles the rise of a young middle-class girl, for whom nothing is quite ever enough, into one of the leaders of international society.

To her father, Bianca was a princess. To her first husband, she was the perfect wife and mother. But to the other men in her life she was so much more. Daughter of a Welsh Surveyor who had brought his Palestinian wife to Mexico at the end of World War II to seek his fortune, Bianca was raised always to expect the best of everything. She quickly discovered, however, that the best was never going to be enough. 

Charming, attractive, vivacious and extremely aware of her power over rich and powerful men, she sought nothing less than to be the absolute ruler of international society. Reluctantly but ruthlessly contriving to bring about the end of her marriage to Bernardo, she quickly allowed herself to become wedded to the fortunes of Ferdie, the psychologically unstable scion of the powerful and rich Piedraplata family, whose international concerns include commerce, banking and jewelry. 

However, when deep cracks start to form in their glamourous jet-set lifestyle together, Bianca turns to the calculating and amoral Philippe Mahfud, an Iraqi business associate of Ferdies, to help her attain the wealth and status she secretly covets. 

Follow Empress Bianca from her earliest days as a middle-class housewife in post-war Mexico as she lies, cheats, schemes and seduces her way to the top. A veritable monster of vanity and pretension, captured with deadly accuracy in Lady Colins lucid prose, Bianca leaves her mark on every couturier's salon, chic restaurant or exclusive gathering she walks into, cutting an unmistakable swathe through social circles and gossip columns from the late 1950s right up to today. 

Lady Colin Campbell's compulsive debut novel is a tale of charm, intrigue and cold-blooded murder set among the high flyers of twentieth-century international society. 

About the author: Lady Colin Campbell is a highly successful and prolific author and has been a prominent and often controversial figure in royal and social circles for many years. She perhaps is best known for her international bestselling book Diana in Private, 1992, and her subsequent extended and revelatory biography of the Princess of Wales, The Real Diana, published in 2004. She has written books on the Royal Family, been a long term columnist and appeared numerous times on TV and Radio as an experienced Royal Insider and expert on the British aristocracy. In 1997 she published her autobiography, A Life Worth Living, which was serialised in The Daily Mail. 

Born in Jamaica, she spent much of her early adult life in America where she became a model and studied apparel design. She is connected to British royalty through common ancestors such as the Emperor Charlemagne and William the Conqueror as well as, through her marriage, to the uncle of the Duke of Argyll, who is a cousin of the Queen. She has two sons and lives in London.

Rating: 5/5

Victim 2117 (A Department Q Thriller Series) by Jussi Adler-Olsen

Paperback: In the heart-pounding next instalment of the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling Department Q series, a terrifying international investigation reveals the complex backstory of one of the department’s own - the enigmatic Assad.

The newspaper refers to the body only as Victim 2117 - the two thousand one hundred and seventeenth refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea. But to three people, the unnamed victim is so much more, and the death sets off a chain of events that throws Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division led by Detective Carl Mørck, into a deeply dangerous - and deeply personal - case. A case that not only reveals dark secrets about the past, but has deadly implications for the future.

For troubled Danish teen Alexander, whose identity is hidden behind his computer screen, the death of Victim 2117 becomes a symbol of everything he resents and the perfect excuse to unleash his murderous impulses in real life. 

For Ghaalib, one of the most brutal tormentors from Abu Ghraib - Saddam Hussein’s infamous prison - the death of Victim 2117 is the first step in a terrorist plot years in the making. And for Department Q’s Assad, Victim 2117 is a link to his buried past - and the family he assumed was long dead.

With the help of the Department Q squad - Carl, Rose, and Gordon - Assad must finally confront painful memories from his years in the Middle East in order to find and capture Ghaalib. But with the clock ticking down to Alexander’s first kill and Ghaalib’s devastating attack, the thinly spread Department Q will need to stay one step ahead of their most lethal adversary yet if they are to prevent the loss of thousands of innocent lives.

Victim 2117 (2020, 2021) is the eighth instalment in the gripping and impressive Department Q Thriller series. It is translated from the Danish by William Frost.

About the author: Jussi Adler-Olsen is Denmark’s number one crime writer and a New York Times bestseller. His books routinely top the bestseller lists in Europe and have sold more than eighteen million copies around the world. His many prestigious Nordic crime-writing awards include the Glass Key Award, also won by Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson.

Rating: 5/5

The Chief Witness: Escape From China’s Modern-Day Concentration Camps by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius

Paperback: The goal of China's campaign is to achieve political control of the entire world. This is why my advice to all other countries is this: "Don't avert your gaze from East Turkestan! This is how your children and grandchildren will be living in the future if you don't defend your freedoms!" China, currently the largest trading nation on the planet, promotes neither friendly relationships nor open exchange. In the opaque political world of the Chinese Communist Party, nothing happens without an ulterior motive. And wherever Beijing's influence is on the rise, lies begin to grow like weeds, suffocating the truth. - Sayragul Sauytbay, Die Kronzeugin, 2020. 

The Chief Witness (2021) is a shocking depiction of one of the world’s most ruthless regimes and the story of one woman’s fight to survive.

I will never forget the camp. I cannot forget the eyes of the prisoners, expecting me to do something for them. They are innocent. I have to tell their story, to tell about the darkness they are in. It is so easy to suffocate us with the demons of powerlessness, shame, and guilt. But we aren’t the ones who should feel ashamed.

Born in China’s north-western province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime: being Kazakh, one of China’s ethnic minorities.

The north-western province borders the largest number of foreign nations and is the point in China that is the closest to Europe. In recent years it has become home to over 1,200 penal camps - modern-day gulags that are estimated to house three million members of the Kazakh and Uyghur minorities. Imprisoned solely due to their ethnicity, inmates are subjected to relentless punishment and torture, including being beaten, raped, and used as subjects for medical experiments. The camps represent the greatest systematic incarceration of an entire people since the Third Reich.

In prison, Sauytbay was put to work teaching Chinese language, culture, and politics, in the course of which she gained access to secret information that revealed Beijing’s long-term plans to undermine not only its minorities, but democracies around the world. Upon her escape to Europe she was reunited with her family, but still lives under the constant threat of reprisal. This rare testimony from the biggest surveillance state in the world reveals not only the full, frightening scope of China’s tyrannical ambitions, but also the resilience and courage of its author.

The Chief Witness is translated from the German (Die Kronzeugin, 2020) by Caroline Waight.

About the authors: Sayragul Sauytbay was awarded the 2021 Nuremberg International Human Rights Award, and the US State Department’s International Women of Courage Award in 2020. Her key witness accounts have already created a stir on the world stage, and have been reported by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Alexandra Cavelius is a freelance author and journalist. She is published in renowned magazines, and is the author of several political nonfiction books. She was also the author of the bestseller Dragon Fighter, the autobiography of the Uighur political activist Rebiya Kadeer, who has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

About the translator: Caroline Waight is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish and German.

Lawless: A Lawyer's Unrelenting Fight For Justice In A War Zone (Non-Fiction) by Kimberley Motley

Paperback: Lawless (2020) is the extraordinary story of Kimberley Motley, the US woman who became the first foreign lawyer to practice in Afghanistan. It is both an extraordinary woman's story, and a legal non-fiction thriller.

In the summer of 2008 Kimberley Motley quit her job as a public defender in Milwaukee to join a US government sponsored 'capacity building' program that helped train lawyers in war-torn Afghanistan. She was 32-years-old at the time, a former Mrs Wisconsin (she entered the competition on a dare) and mother of three who had never travelled outside the United States.

What she brought to Afghanistan was a toughness and resilience that came from growing up in one of the most dangerous cities in the US, a fundamental belief in everyone's right to justice - whether you live in Milwaukee, New York or Kabul, and a kick-ass approach to practicing law that was to make her a legend in the archaic, highly conservative legal environment of Afghanistan.

Through sheer force of personality, ingenuity and perseverance, she became the first foreign lawyer to practice in Afghanistan, let alone the first woman. Her legal work swiftly morphed into a personal mission - to bring 'justness' to the defenceless and voiceless. 

In the space of two years, Motley established herself as an expert on Afghanistan's fledgling criminal justice system, steeped in that country's complex laws but equally adept at wielding Sharia law and arcane aspects of the Holy Quran in defence of her clients. Her radical approach has seen her successfully represent both Afghans and Westerners, overturning sentences for men and women who've become subject to often appalling miscarriages of justice.

Motley's extraordinary work in Afghanistan was the recent subject of a critically acclaimed documentary entitled 'Motley's Law'. In the US, she has been profiled in Vanity Fair, Marie Claire and the New York Times. Her legal exploits have reached UK and Australian readers through frequent coverage by the BBC (print, television and radio), as well as in The Telegraph, The Guardian and The Australian newspapers and online editions. In addition, she was the subject of an Aljazeera profile titled 'Beauty and the East,' and was also profiled in the BBC's weekly magazine. Motley was a recent featured speaker at Oslo Freedom Forum and her TED talk entitled 'How I Defend the Rule of Law' has been viewed over a million times. Motley has also begun to work as an international lawyer outside of Afghanistan, bringing the skills she developed there to the global stage. A recent client, the Cuban dissident and graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, was released from a Havana prison in January shortly after Motley intervened on his behalf.

About the author: Kimberley Motley is an American lawyer and former beauty queen who has made headlines around the world with her ground-breaking legal work in Afghanistan and beyond. As the first foreign lawyer to practice in Afghanistan, her high profile cases have included her work in returning two Australian children taken illegally to the country by their father in 2015. She also represented former Australian soldier Robert Langdon and was responsible for successfully arguing for a Presidential pardon which resulted in his release from Afghanistan's most notorious prison.

Saint Silouan the Athonite by Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

Paperback: In the autumn of 1892, a young Russian peasant named Simeon from the province of Tambov, was drawn to that ancient repository of Orthodox spirituality, Mount Athos. He had done his military service and now came to the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon, to embark on long years of spiritual combat lasting until his death in 1938. Although he was unlearned and ignorant in the ordinary sense, tireless inner striving gave him authentic personal experience of Christianity identical with that of many of the early ascetic Desert Fathers.

The first part of this book is a remarkable account of St Silouan's life (1866-1938), personality and teaching by his spiritual disciple Archimandrite Sophrony. 

Archimandrite Sophrony went to Mt Athos in 1925 and there at the Monastery of St Panteleimon became amanuensis to Staretz Silouan.

Part two comprises the writings of Silouan, originally penciled in laborious, unformed characters on odd scraps of paper. The Lord said, "Every one that is of the truth hears my voice" (John 18:37). And according to Father Sophrony, "these words are applicable to Staretz Silouan's notes ... [That] whoever has received from God the mind and wisdom to know him will be aware in the Staretz' words of the breath of the Holy Spirit."

In 1988, Staretz Silouan was placed in the canon of saints by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church. 

Saint Silouan The Athonite (1991) is translated from the Russian by Rosemary Edmonds. 

About the author: Archimandrite Sophrony (Sergei Sakharov) (1896-1993) has a unique place among artists. He studied art and painting at the Academy of Arts (1915–1917) and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1920–1921). In 1921, he left Russia and settled in Paris in 1922 after a short journey to Italy and Germany. At that time, Paris was one of the major European cities with a large population of Russians, many of whom had escaped from Russia after the 1917 Revolution.

The first phase of Sergei’s sojourn in France was characterized by a period of spiritual research, including even some yoga courses. In 1924, on the Saturday before Easter, Sergei decided to change his life by moving towards a pragmatic Christianity that was centered on the efforts of man to know Jesus through prayer. In 1925, he began studying theology at the Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, but after a short time, in 1926, he abandoned his theological studies for the St Panteleimon’s Monastery in Mount Athos, Greece (a monastery with a dominant Russian ethnicity), wherein he received the monastic tonsure as Sophrony. In 1930, he was ordained to the diaconate, and in 1941, to the priesthood by Serbian bishop Nicolai Velimirovič of Zicha. In 1930, Sophrony began a close spiritual relationship with the staretz Silouan, which lasted until the staretz’s death on 24 September 1938.

Sophrony immigrated back to Paris in 1947 due to health reasons, but also because of the situation that was created in Mount Athos after World War II, which led to a drastic limitation of the number of non-Greek monks at the Athonite monasteries. This post-Athonite period was important for him. He settled in an old house in the Parisian suburb of Sainte Geneviève des Bois, which was then used at the time as a home for elderly Russian emigrants. In this period, Sophrony’s main concern was making known, publishing, and putting into practice Silouan’s teachings. 

His efforts came to fruition in September 1948, when the first edition of the staretz’s notes was printed using the cyclostyle process. Ample comments with an impressive hermeneutic, dogmatic, and philosophical background, and brief bibliographic notes accompanied Silouan’s writings. This edition was followed by a second one in 1952, in which Sophrony added a theological introduction to the writings of Silouan. This last edition, which was translated into English, German, French, and Greek, depicts the staretz Silouan as one of the most important contemporary spiritual fathers, while conferring significant credibility and spiritual authority to Sophrony.

The Parisian period gave Sophrony the opportunity to begin a spiritual journey that would culminate in the organization of an initial ascetic nucleus of men and women in 1956, and subsequently the transfer of this group to England and the foundation of the St John the Baptist Monastery. Thus, for Sophrony, the prophetic words of Silouan that he received when he lived as a hermit in Karoulia, in the heart of Mount Athos, were coming true: "One day you yourself will distribute the obedience."

The move to England was mainly determined by several factors, as follows: the precarious conditions of the monastic community in Sainte Geneviève; the linguistic heterogeneity of the monastic group, which was increasing; and, not least, the attempt of some Orthodox theologians and intellectuals to isolate Sophrony due to his refusal to openly condemn the political complicity of the Moscow Patriarchate, whose leaders abandoned political opposition to the communist regime and pledged their loyalty and support. He was also rejected by the St Sergius Institute for his sympathies toward the Russian church and never completed his theological training.

the Orthodox bishop Anthony Bloom, suffragan of the Patriarchate Exarchate of Western Europe (Moscow Patriarchate), blessed and approved the foundation of the monastery. In 1962, the monastery entered under the canonical jurisdiction of the newly established diocese of Great Britain and Ireland - that was known as the Diocese of Sourozh - to which Anthony was appointed as titular bishop. In 1964, due to some disagreements with Anthony, Sophrony asked Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow for his blessing to transfer the monastery to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. There is no explicit information regarding this crucial point of Sophrony’s community. 

Nonetheless, it seems that the disagreement between them was more personal than institutional, and it was primarily determined by their different spiritual positions and monastic experiences. Thus, the monastery entered under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1965, and later received the status of stavropegial monastery. Sophrony was the superior of the monastery until his death on 11 July 1993. 

Since 1993, the staretz and superior of the monastery has been Archimandrite Kirill, one of the disciples of Sophrony since his Athonite period.

The Catholic Church and the Counter-faith: A Study of the Roots of Modern Secularism, Relativism and De-Christianisation by Philip Trower

Paperback/E-Book: This book is the sequel to Turmoil and Truth (2003). 

In his earlier volume, Philip Trower provided an acute analysis of what happened within the Church both during and following the Second Vatican Council of 1962-5. Here he explores the root and the branches of the intellectual and spiritual malaise in the West today and how they have affected the Church. After surveying the unrest in the Church from within, he now looks at it from without, as it offers a supernatural alternative to an aggressive secularism.

The main thrust of his argument is that the 18th-century Enlightenment has been the root cause of modern man's problems. The Enlightenment, unlike the Romantic period that followed it, was not a passing literary or artistic fashion. In dethroning God and putting man in his place, it was akin to a new world religion. Its core tenets are still with us today: a trusting belief in perpetual progress; a conviction that reason alone can solve all human problems; a tenacious adherence to the notions of liberty, equality and fraternity. As such it is the parent of liberalism, socialism and Communism; although their means differ they share the same goal: the attempt to realise a paradise in this world.

For so entrenched are the assumptions of the Enlightenment at every level that they seem almost the 'normal' position; to criticise them appears reactionary and to dislodge them folly. Even Catholics are not immune, often thinking that progress, rather than the struggle between good and evil, is the motor driving history. Perhaps this is why a 'sub-creation' such as JRR Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, is so popular; it provides an imaginative truth for those hungering for it that is not available elsewhere.

It is also what it makes it so hard to enter the mindset of pre-Enlightenment man, who believed that was answerable to God first; who wrestled against sin; whose behaviour sought to accord with divine as well as human laws; and who looked towards a life after death that would resolve all the sorrowful enigmas of earthly existence. Even the word 'Enlightenment' seems to imply a previous intellectual darkness which has now happily been dispelled by the light of reason and common-sense. Of course, as Pope Benedict XVI has pointed out in his writings, there is no conflict between faith and the right use of reason; it is when reason jettisons faith that a fatal unbalance occurs.

Trower shows that what makes the Enlightenment - and its fruits - so hard to combat from the Church's point of view is that it is a Christian heresy, indeed a "secularised Christianity", with its own "confusing blend of benign and toxic elements." He carefully unpacks the ideas of "liberty, equality, fraternity" - the intoxicating slogan of the French Revolution - in the light of Christian faith and demonstrates how easily they can be perverted when cut adrift from God.

The book's (2006, 2011, 2018) great strength is the author's ability to express complex ideas with brevity and clarity and always to examine them in the light of eternal truth. He writes, as it were, sub specie veritatis, so that the common reader - at whom the book is pitched - is truly enlightened, able to pick his way through the siren songs of all the different intellectual movements of the last 200 years and the personalities behind them. 

Trower is as conversant with Kierkegaard as with liberation theology, with Nietzsche as with Darwin. Trower, like the historian Paul Johnson, is an erudite general man of letters. In an age of over-specialisation it can appear an amateur position; in fact Trower is a civilised man par excellence - shaped by his faith and the "civilisation of love" (to quote Pope Paul VI's fine phrase) - and thus discerning about all other ersatz civilisations. 

In his self-deprecating way he describes his genre of writing as haute vulgarisation. What this means is that for those of us who have neither the leisure nor the ability to make wise judgements about the movements that follow one another on the world's stage, Trower makes an admirable guide, pointing out the pitfalls and always helping us to higher ground.

This fine book, at 300 pages a superb summary of the bad fruits of the Enlightenment, is essentially a clarion call to Catholics to educate themselves so that they can give reasons for their faith in the face of the sophisticated rationalism surrounding them. "Atheism is an act of unreason", declares Trower. 

Philip Trower's final challenge is "Can the Church save the West from the results of the Enlightenment?" He believes that the liberal democracies under which we are currently governed are destined to decline. For too long they have been living off the patrimony of Christianity while inhabiting a post-Christian milieu. "How do you govern a nation where the majority of the citizens are at least practical atheists?" he asks. It remains a haunting question.

About the author: Philip Trower's (1923-2019) books on theology and history attracted considerable interest from a younger generation of Catholics, shaped by Pope John Paul II. A warm admirer of John Paul, he saw the years that immediately followed the Second Vatican Council as a time of turmoil that emerged into greater confidence and unity through the efforts of the Polish Pope.

 

Born on 16 May 1923 to Sir William Gosselin Trower and Joan Olivia Tomlin, John Philip Trower was educated at a preparatory school in Dorset and then privately with a family in France, followed by four years at Eton. He belonged to an Anglican family but took an early interest in Catholicism partly through the influence of his French governess.

 

Trower joined the Army in 1942, was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1943, saw service in the Italian campaign and sustained a shrapnel wound in his arm in Rome during the Battle of Anzio. He later enjoyed recalling that he had acquired skills in basket-weaving and embroidery as part of compulsory occupational therapy while recovering. On returning to active duty he served in Egypt with an intelligence unit based in Cairo.

 

His writing career began after demobilisation the 1950s, when he became a regular contributor to The Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. His first novel, Tillotson, was published in 1951 by Collins and received a Book Society commendation at the instigation of the historian Veronica Wedgewood and novelist Rose Macaulay.

 

Another novel written at this time did not see the light of day until the 1990s when its existence was revealed in a casual conversation with a Catholic journalist and it was unearthed and sent to Ignatius Press in the USA. Published as A Danger to the State, it is centred on the suppression of the Jesuits and the tragedy following the destruction of their work in South America, and received favourable reviews and considerable popularity.

 

Trower became a Catholic in 1953 partly under the influence of his friend the poet Dunstan Thompson, whose literary executor he became after the latter’s death. Thompson had for some years abandoned his childhood Catholicism, but returned during a procession at the Catholic shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk which the two had gone to watch simply because they lived nearby. Trower had, as he would later write, long been fascinated by the Catholic faith and regarded it as intellectually more coherent and convincing than Anglicanism, as well as spiritually compelling in its Eucharistic doctrine.

 

He went on to become a noted contributor to Catholic newspapers and magazine in Britain, the USA, and Canada, frequently focussing on the tensions and controversies following the Second Vatican Council. He took a positive view of the Council, which he regarded as a necessary continuation of the First Vatican Council ( which took place in the 19th century) involving the developing understanding of the Church’s teaching. But he believed that in the postconciliar years, its message had been hijacked and that there had been a loss of intellectual coherence. His books Turmoil and Truth and The Catholic Church and the Counterfaith reflected his concern – and that of others, including leading figures of the Council such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) - about the ways in which the Council’s message was distorted.

 

Trower enjoyed a moment of fame in 2018 by finally attending his Oxford degree ceremony sixty years after graduating. Following a shortened wartime course at Oxford he gained a BA but by the time he received his exam results he was already in the Army. In the summer of 2018, his nephews decided that he should finally graduate and arranged for him to do so. The event received considerable media coverage, with Trower, arriving in a wheelchair, characteristically saying that his failure to graduate earlier was due to “sheer inefficiency on my part”.

 

Philip Trower was a strong supporter of FAITH magazine and contributed a number of features over the years. His funeral Mass, concelebrated by several priest friends, was held at Nazareth House, Cheltenham. Unmarried, he was close to his wider family and spent his last years living with or near them in Hertfordshire and Cheltenham. 

Definition: Quisquilious

Prison Journal Volume 1: The Cardinal Makes His Appeal 27 February-13 July 2019 by George Cardinal Pell

Paperback: Innocent! 

That was the final verdict, but not before Cardinal George Pell endured a grueling five years of accusations, trials, conviction, humiliation, character assassination, and finally more than a year of imprisonment after being convicted by an Australian appellate court for a crime he did not commit.

Immediately led off to jail in handcuffs and with shackles binding his ankles following that trial on 13 March 2019, the Australian prelate began a six-year prison sentence for “historical sex abuse”. After enduring more than 13 months in prison, eight of those in solitary confinement, the original sentence was overturned when Cardinal Pell was vindicated by an unanimous 7-0 decision rendered by the Australian High Court. 

His victory over an extreme travesty of justice was not just personal, but one for the entire Catholic Church.

Bearing no ill will to his accuser, judges, prison workers, journalists, and those harboring and expressing hate for him, the cardinal used his time in prison as a kind of “extended retreat” and eloquently filled pages with, among other details, his daily activities, personal thoughts, love for his fellow man, and beautiful, moving prayers.

Prison Journal Volume 1 (2020) is a testament to the capacity of God's grace to inspire insight, magnanimity, and goodness amidst wickedness, evil, and injustice. It is a beautiful and remarkable work that bears witness to the Christian character that divine grace formed in its author, George Cardinal Pell. It demonstrates a man, freed by the High Court, who could not be broken: a man whose vibrant Christian faith sustained him under extraordinary pressures. During his doctoral studies at Oxford in the late 1960s, young Fr George Pell had ample opportunity to ponder the faithful witness of Thomas More and John Fisher under grave pressure. He could not have known then that he, too, would suffer calumny, public vilification, and unjust imprisonment. But, like More and Fisher, George Cardinal Pell took his stand on the truth, confident that the truth is liberating in the deepest meaning of human freedom. The journal you are about to read illustrates that liberation in a luminous way. 

About the author: George Cardinal Pell, formerly Archbishop of Sydney (2001–2014) and of Melbourne (1996­–2001), Australia, was appointed in 2014 by Pope Francis as Prefect of the Secretariate for the Economy at the Vatican. He also served on Pope Francis' Council of Cardinals. Cardinal Pell received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Urbanianum University in Rome, and his DPhil in Theology from the University of Oxford. His previous books include Test Everything and Issues of Faith and Morals. His Prison Journal Volume 2 (2021) is out now. 

Indulgence

On A Rainy Summer's Day in June

33 Meditations On Death: Notes From The Wrong End Of Medicine by Dr David Jarrett

Paperback: Oh death, won't you spare me over for another year? - Traditional American song

What is a good death?

How would you choose to live your last few months?

How do we best care for the rising tide of very elderly?

This unusual and important book is a series of reflections on death in all its forms: the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his thirty years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end.

Profound, provocative, strangely funny and astonishingly compelling, it is an impassioned plea that we start talking frankly and openly about death. He writes about all the conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society as a whole should be having.

And it is a call to arms for us to make radical changes to our perspective on 'the seventh age of man'.

The covid pandemic has made this book's central themes acutely prescient. Profound, provocative, strangely funny and astonishingly compelling, it is an impassioned plea that we start talking frankly and openly about the end of life - not just for ourselves but for our loved ones too.

33 Mediations On Death was first published in 2020 by Doubleday and its Black Swan edition in 2021. 

About the author: David Jarrett has been a doctor for forty years, thirty of which as an NHS consultant in geriatric and stroke medicine. He is a clinician, teacher, examiner and former medical manager with extensive experience of frailty, death and dying and the modern world’s failure to confront the realities. He has also worked in Canada, India, Africa and the USSR. He is married with two children and lives in Hampshire during the week, and in London at weekends. 

Children

 

St Justin Martyr: The First and Second Apologies by St Justin, Martyr

Hardback: This volume contains an original English translation of Justin Martyr’s First and Second Apology, originally written in Greek. 

Recognized as a formative influence on the development of Christian theology in the early church, Martyr’s apologies are among the earliest attempts to systematize Christian theology.

The First Apology is dated to between AD 155-157. It is also generally believed that the Second Apology was originally part of the larger First Apology, although there is uncertainty among scholars about this point. 

The First Apology was an early work of Christian apologetics addressed by Justin Martyr to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. In addition to arguing against the persecution of individuals solely for being Christian, Justin also provides the Emperor with a defense of the philosophy of Christianity and a detailed explanation of contemporary Christian practices and rituals. 

This work, along with the Second Apology, has been cited as one of the earliest examples of Christian apology, and many scholars attribute this work to creating a new genre of apology out of what was a typical Roman administrative procedure.

The First and Second Apologies (1997) - with introduction and notes - is translated from the Greek by Leslie William Barnard. 

About the author: Justin Martyr, of the early second century AD, was born in Flavia Neapolis (modern Nablus), a Greek-speaking town in Judea within the Roman Empire. He was well educated at a young age, and as an adult, pursued the philosophies and intellectual paths of the Greeks in search of the truth that governs the universe. Upon encountering the Christians, Justin quickly converted, finding no other “sure and useful philosophy” as Christianity. Once a Christian, he put all of his energy into spreading the gospel, and continued to engage on philosophical grounds with those he met - of all walks of life. These writings reflect the very first philosophical Christian writings - including the first philosophical exposition of the Logos and the first attempt to reconcile faith and reason.