Books

St Mary's Church, Hampstead, north London, will host 'Finding Margaret: An afternoon with Andrew Pierce and Paddy O'Connell' next Sunday, 15 September from 4-5pm, in-person and online. This will be unique opportunity to hear the courageous and heartrending journey of a son's search for his birth mother. In his new book, Finding Margaret: Solving the Mystery of My Birth Mother, the journalist and b... Read More

On Tuesday, 3 September, the book The Reality of Assisted Dying: Understanding the Issues will be published by Open University Press. The book, which is edited by Professor Julian Hughes and Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, appears at a critical moment in the UK debate. It provides up-to-date reflections from a broad variety of international experts on the profoundly important issues that surround cha... Read More

Would you like to turn the story of your life, or of someone in your family, into a book? Greg Watts has over 30 years' experience as a journalist and author, and he has ghost written numerous memoirs and autobiographies. His books include From Gangland to Promised Land, with former gangster John Pridmore, Don't Drop the Coffin, with undertaker Barry Albin-Dyer, and Meeting the Guv'nor, with box... Read More

No Guilty Bystander. The Extraordinary Life of Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, by Frank Fromherz and Suzanne Sattler IHM. Orbis, Maryknoll (NY), 2023 270 pages plus notes. On April 4, 2024 Bishop Thomas Gumbleton died in Detroit, the city where he had served as an auxiliary bishop from 1968 until his rather brutal forced resignation in 2006. Throughout that time and right down to his death, his motto was... Read More

A slight chill in the evening air, the first few leaves falling from trees - and the arrival of Sacred Space: The Prayerbook: all annual harbingers of Autumn, some more eagerly anticipated than others. And so, the 2025 Prayerbook, published by The Irish Jesuits is out now, and will be welcomed by the many devotees of this trusted and accessible spiritual guide. Sacred Space, as a book and a webs... Read More

It is easy to despair of the United Nations while mass atrocities occur around the world. However, Linda Melvern's authoritative study of the 1994 Rwandan genocide reminds us that it is the individual states on the UN Security Council that choose to prevent it from enforcing its own resolutions. In the case of Rwanda, diplomats representing the UK, US and France actively stopped its own peacekeepi... Read More

At a time when truth is ever harder to distinguish from lies, Father Robert Spitzer, SJ takes his mastery of the inextricable ties between science and faith to a new level in his new book: Christ, Science and Reason: What we can know about Jesus, Mary and Miracles, published by Ignatius Press, which lays out scientific evidence for Christ as well as affirms the inexplicable miracles at major fait... Read More

American Prometheus: the triumph and tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird & Martin J Sherwin. Each August, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is debated by those who considered it essential to prevent the loss of more life during a conventional assault on Japan, and those who believe Tokyo would surrender anyway when the Soviet Union attacked Manchuria. The 2023 Hollywood biopi... Read More

Helene Ijaz PhD, is an educator, mediator, and consultant in cross-cultural, interracial, and interfaith relations. She's the author of 'Your Heart Knows the Way: A Guide to Christian-Muslim Marriage'. A Roman Catholic Christian, she has been married to a Muslim for over fifty years. In her conversation with Joseph Victor Edwin SJ, she shares the graces and challenges of interfaith marriages that ... Read More

A young man and a young woman passed by one another on a French bridge. Each noticed the other and subsequently made enquiries as to who the other was. This chance encounter of Louis and Zelie Martin would lead not only to their youngest daughter becoming St Therese of Lisieux becoming one of the Church's most beloved saints, but also to their own canonisation, in 2015, the first of a married coup... Read More

The multi-award-winning author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce has been named the Waterstones Children's Laureate 2024-2026. He was presented with the prestigious medal by outgoing laureate, Joseph Coelho, at a ceremony in Leeds on Tuesday. Since his first book Millions won the CILIP Carnegie Medal, Frank has written a series of best-sellers - including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again. ... Read More

Robert Finnigan, Archivist of the Diocese of Leeds, reviews a new book tracing the fascinating history of Catholic priests in the British armed forces. 'Stories that can so easily remain hidden from our history books and sit outside our collective memory are those of the contribution made by our brave and faithful military chaplains…' So writes Bishop Paul Mason, Bishop of the Forces, in his Fo... Read More

Leaving God for God: The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Britain, 1847-2017 by Susan O'Brien. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2017). A study of five generations of Daughters of Charity in Britain charting their changing ministries and analysing a distinctive way of life focused on serving people in poverty. With 64 pages of colour photographs, maps and an appendix providing a pen ... Read More

As summer rolls around and we jet off on our holidays or enjoy a stay-cation, families may find that they have a bit more time on their hands, and what better way to while away the summer hours than with good books, says Marriage & Family Life Co-ordinator, Antonia Braithwaite, in her Faith in the Home column. For children aged 8-12 years, an excellent series is the Narnia books by CS Lewis (... Read More