I Wish No 1423

If One Thinks

The Reader

Listen To The Silence: A Retreat with Père Jacques

Paperback: As a diocesan priest, Père Jacques Bunel (1900-1945) was frequently in demand as a preacher in his home diocese of Rouen (Normandy). Along with his duties as educator in a prep school in Le Havre, he spoke at important public occasions. He was chosen to give the sermon that marked the five hundredth anniversary of the death of St Joan of Arch in the Cathedral of Rouen, the city where she was burned at the stake.

Afterwards, when he became a Discalced Carmelite friar (the cover photo shows him on the day he professed his vows), he continued to exercise a preaching ministry. Carmelite nuns invited him to give conferences and to preach as retreat master. 

The Carmelite community at Pontoise received from him a seven-day retreat in the late summer of 1943. This book contains the talks he gave to the nuns: they are inspiring, but also warmhearted reflections, on questions of key interest to his audience. Among the topics were love for Christ, for His Blessed Mother, the nuns' Carmelite contemplative prayer life, and their religious observance, but all received deft treatment from this confrère who eventually became famous for his compassionate assistance to the persecuted in World War II.

We owe the full texts of those talks, as well as helpful notes and an introduction, to Reverend Dr Francis J Murphy - Father Murphy was a diocesan priest who became a good friend of the Carmelites through his interest in Père Jacques. He taught at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. This collection of talks extends the knowledge Father Murphy provided to the public in the biography volume he named and published at ICS Publications with the title: Père Jacques, Resplendent in Victory (1998).

Listen To The Silence: A Retreat with Père Jacques (2005) is translated and edited by Francis J Murphy.

About the author: Père Jacques de Jésus, OCD (1900-1945) was a French Roman Catholic priest and Discalced Carmelite friar. 

While serving as headmaster of a boarding school run by his Order, he took in several Jewish refugees to protect them from the Nazi government of occupation, for which he was arrested and imprisoned in various Nazi concentration camps.

Père Jacques was one of those who undertook efforts to help Jewish people during the Nazi occupation of France. His efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, resulting in his death at Linz, Austria, after having suffered in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex in 1945, weeks after its liberation by Allied Forces.

Père Jacques was named one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" by the State of Israel in 1985, as a non-Jew who risked his life during the Holocaust to save Jews. French film-maker Louis Malle paid tribute to Père Jacques, who was his primary school headmaster, in the 1987 film Au revoir les enfants. The cause for his canonization by the Catholic Church was opened in 1990. (Wikipedia)

Shut Up In Rooms

Authorised Wolves

Creativity Stifled

The Stings Of Conscience

Civilizations

Emergency Books

Priceless

The Murder Of Lord Shaftesbury (True Crime) by Michael Litchfield

Paperback: The scandalous debauchery of the playboy 10th Earl of Shaftesbury sent seismic shock waves through the British aristocracy. 

One of the riches men in the country, he abandoned his loyal wife and two sons for a depraved life of drunken orgies, cocaine, and bed-hopping in the South of France. His riotous romp plumbed the depths when he divorced the mother of his children to marry a foreign prostitute, whom he treated lavishly. 

Within two years, however, he was planning to divorce her to install another from his stable of swingers as Countess and chatelaine of his Dorset mansion and estates. 

But ugly fate caught up with him first. 

After being reported missing in November 2004, his skeletal remains were found several months later among household rubbish in what had once been a beauty spot on the ritzy French Riviera. 

The Countess and her psychopath brother were convicted of the premeditated murder, committed in a desperate attempt to retain the titled status and a lion's share of the inheritance before the Earl had changed his will. The full, tawdry story has never been told - until the publication of this book in 2016. People privy to the Earl's darkest secrets have been tracked down and have filled in vital gaps never revealed or published before. Hollywood superstars and a reigning monarch were even cited at the trial. In this meticulously researched book, the author has unearthed truths beyond the most warped imagination.

The Murder of Lord Shaftesbury: The True Story of the Passionate Love Affair that Ended in High Society's Most Shocking Murder (2016) is the shocking true account of how an ancient and distinguished aristocratic family found its reputation blackened almost beyond repair.

The book can be purchased from Amazon. 

About the author: Michael Litchfield is the author of several true-crime and current-affair books. His background is rooted in investigative journalism. He worked as a crime correspondent for several national newspapers and was contracted to Time/Life magazine to investigate the Mafia's infiltration of the Bahamas government. His books on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and the biography of controversial Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, Sir James Anderton, coupled with the Northern Ireland terrorist issue, were highly acclaimed, staying for several weeks in the top ten non-fiction bestsellers' lists. His last staff newspaper appointment was as political editor in London with Northcliffe Newspapers.

The Sin Of Credulity

A Day Of Rest