Current Titles
Aubrey Annersley's Amazing Coach Holiday
Retiree, and new dad, Aubrey Annersley, has become a bit jaded — journalists no longer ask him about "newly married life in one's later-60s", and other mums in the park now know full well that he's the father, not the grandfather, albeit (so the papers had said) a rather more financially-fortunate one than most former lower-lower-middle management veterans from Blackingly Borough Council. Wife Lupin proposes he does something completely different, namely, go on a coach holiday, but… alone! And so he does… and while he enjoys his trip, it turns out to be rather more than he had bargained for (and some of his fellow-travellers turn out to be… not quite what he'd anticipated); but he does encounter a few life-changing ideas…
The Curious Case of the Atheist Attitude to Death & Various Savings
More Essays of Popular Theology and Religion & Art
This little book is successor to Happiness, Truth & Holy Images (2019), and like it, is "an eclectic collection of different kinds of pieces"; however, this work contains eight short articles which were originally published on my website Affirming The Faith, which I decided to wind up a few years ago. These pieces were saved (hence the present title), and while everything I wrote for AtF exists on my computer, those included here seemed to be the best (and, of course, a few AtF pieces were also re-published in the 2019 book). Like the articles found in the first book, those here are "a perhaps-odd mixture of scholarship and speculation". Non-Fiction
For many Christians, there is a door between themselves and a full, life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ; it may be a door that we must choose to go through, or one which we ourselves might open to the one who knocks upon it, from without. Both images occur in the New Testament, and the means of either access — this little book contends — is prayer. Non-Fiction
Faz & Mef And Some Christmas-Card Stories
What? Are the writings of Marlowe, Goethe and Mann not sufficient? But this Faust has really bad shopping experiences, and this Mephistopheles delivers flat-pack furniture. I've read somewhere that It's A Wonderful Life started out as a short story sent by the author with his Christmas cards. The present author has often done this - they are all to be found here.
Happiness, Truth & Holy Images
Essays of Popular Theology and Religion & Art
As a society we seem to be obsessed with happiness — but the more we search for it, the harder it gets to find, or so it seems. Maybe we're looking in the wrong place, or shouldn't be looking at all; maybe we should direct our energies towards something else. Non-Fiction
Liverpool Cathedral
As a society we seem to be obsessed with happiness — but the more we search for it, the harder it gets to find, or so it seems. Maybe we're looking in the wrong place, or shouldn't be looking at all; maybe we should direct our energies towards something else. Non-Fiction
Themes and Forms in a Great Modern Church Building
This work — the result of several decades' study of the building-attempts to complement the many existing histories, and illustrated accounts, of Liverpool Cathedral, looking at the nature and forms of the Gothic style, and setting the building in the context of modern Gothic architecture in Britain and north America. It includes the most complete list of references and documentation currently available. Non-Fiction
Giles Gilbert Scott - Speeches, Interviews, & Writings
This work — the result of several decades' study of the building-attempts to complement the many existing histories, and illustrated accounts, of Liverpool Cathedral, looking at the nature and forms of the Gothic style, and setting the building in the context of modern Gothic architecture in Britain and north America. It includes the most complete list of references and documentation currently available. Non-Fiction
Transcribed and Introduced by John Thomas
Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) was the architect of many churches, power stations, and the familiar red telephone box, but his life's work was Liverpool Cathedral. He produced no book or manifesto to explain his ideas and attitudes to his work, but instead left various speeches, interviews and letters. This collection attempts to bring these writings together in one convenient place, with brief introductions. Non-Fiction
Redemption Achieved
Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960) was the architect of many churches, power stations, and the familiar red telephone box, but his life's work was Liverpool Cathedral. He produced no book or manifesto to explain his ideas and attitudes to his work, but instead left various speeches, interviews and letters. This collection attempts to bring these writings together in one convenient place, with brief introductions. Non-Fiction
Sargent's sculpture of Christ's crucifixion was created to form the centrepiece of the "Christian end" of the mural cycle The Triumph of Religion, with which the artist decorated part of Boston Public Library (Massachusetts), a cycle which occupied him from 1890, but remained unfinished in 1917. In addition to the plaster and wood relief in situ in Boston, Sargent commissioned a series of bronze casts of his work, large (life-size figures: St. Paul's Cathedral, London), medium (Tate Gallery, London, and Fogg Museum, Harvard), and small (which were given as presents, to friends, and are now mostly in public collections). This little book is the first major study of this important fin de siécle work. The Foreword is by Richard Ormond, the foremost Sargent scholar. Non-Fiction
Aubrey Annersley's Lucky Day
Newly-retired minor employee Aubrey Annersley feels in need of a long rest, after decades at Blackingly Borough Council. Instead, he teams up with an odd bunch of septuagenarians and a Gothic-looking IT expert, and finds himself trying to answer life's oldest questions - aided by a love of housework and a dreadful sense of humour.
Death Tonight
A place to be travelled through very quickly, without stopping, is the England of the late-21st century – in which human conceptions are reprocessed by the State, lifespans are limited by "usefulness", the ubiquitous Care Bureau reports on everyone and everything - and TV gameshows are truly deadly affairs. This future-dystopian fantasy describes the kind of future we seem to be entering into.
Not Long Now
Novice art historian Daisy Taylor digs deep into the past of tragic, failed painter Robert Levenham only to experience danger, personal revelations, and more than she bargained for about her own precarious origins...
Beyond This Wilderness
A long-secreted document exposes events of badness and suffering two centuries ago; but the source of the evil – and also hope – is still very much present, in this gothic tale of dark events in rural England.
Christianity and Materialism. The Church, And the World, In Western Society
The perilous situation that Christianity is in, in the West, arose not out of recent controversies, but resulted in the slow but sure acceptance, in European thought, of materialist philosophies and world-views, the foundation of which the Churches were far too ready to accept. Non-Fiction
The Welsh Dresser & Various Tails
A highly original collection of ten stories.
Department E
Desire, Acquire, Consume, Gratify! Blame! Complain! Object! Disdain!. Self! Self! Self! The values, concerns and pseudo-philosophies that rule our world are exposed in this new fictional work...
Teddei Thirty
Security-services violence, state-sponsored "spirituality", genetic manipulation, juvenile gang killing ... our future world?
Benebella
A painting entitled Benebella is found in a dusty second-hand shop in a back-street of Edwardian London, and it has a curious effect on the young insurance clerk, Abel Smythe, who finds it there...
Ruins, Rooms & Reveries
This inspiring memoir of childhood days spent in Worcestershire, England, describes the discovery of the power and romance of historic buildings and places, and the almost spiritual effect of place and environment on a young mind. Non-Fiction