Kirjahaku

People, not abstract ideas, make history and in this volume A.N. Wilson has pieced together hundreds of different lives to tell a story - one that is still unfinished in our own day. Here are the poor and obscure as well as the lofty and famous - each in the very act of creating the Victorian age.

When this book begins, in the reign of Edward VII, Great Britain commands the mightiest empire the world has ever seen. By the time it ends, with the Coronation of Elizabeth II, Britain has emerged victorious from a world war, but ruined as a world power. How did Britain's power and influence decline?

Recklessly defending this corrupt dictatorship, the newspaper faces off against Father Vivyan Chell, an Anglican monk and missionary who is working to overthrow the corrupt regime. My Name Is Legion is a savage satire on the morality of contemporary Britain - its Press, its politics, its Church, its rich, its underclass.

There is something rather disquieting about Sallie Declan, a young American in London, and it is not just her obsession with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the subject of her PhD thesis. But a progressively darker reality unfolds as we are led inexorably towards a terrible and shocking climax.

When Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, many proclaimed the start of a new Elizabethan Age. Few had any inkling, however, of the stupendous changes that would take place over the next 50 years, in Britain and around the world.In Our Times, A.N. Wilson takes the reader on an exhilarating journey from that day to this. With his acute eye not just for the broad social and cultural sweep but also for the telling detail, he brilliantly distils half a century of unprecedented social and political change.Here are the defining events and characters of the modern age, from the Suez crisis to Vietnam, The Beatles to Princess Diana, the miners' strike to the Cold War. Here are the Angry Young Men, the satirists of Beyond the Fringe, Ruth Ellis and the abolition of hanging, the rise of pop culture and celebrity, industrial unrest and the Winter of Discontent, the Thatcher era and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. This book will propel you from post-war austerity - an age of deference in which men wore hats and women wore gloves - through the alterations in our social landscape to the multi-cultural Britain of today. Despite the appalling tyrannies that have taken place in the world, Wilson argues that in the last fifty years Britain has known a period of prosperity and peace without precedent in its history.With Our Times, A.N. Wilson triumphantly concludes the acclaimed trilogy which includes The Victorians and After the Victorians. It makes compelling reading for anyone interested in the forces that have shaped our world.

Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years 1923-40, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth. Winifred, an English girl, brought up in an orphanage in East Grinstead, married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany's most controversial genius, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hope for the coming, not of a warrior, a fearless Siegfried, but of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist, a redeemer-figure. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal - a wild-eyed Viennese opera-fanatic in a trilby hat, a mac and a badly fitting suit. Hitler has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who believes she can really see his poetry. Almost at once they drop formalities and call one another 'Du' rather than 'Sie'. She is Winnie and he is Wolf. Like Winnie, Hitler was an outsider. Like her, he was haunted by the impossibility of reconciling the pursuit of love and the pursuit of power; the ultimate inevitability, if you pursued power, of destruction. Both had known the humiliations of poverty. Both felt angry and excluded by society. Both found each other in an unusual kinship that expressed itself through a love of opera.

Betjeman, a devout Anglican, was tormented by guilt about the storms this emotional triangle caused. This book is the first to use fully the vast archive of personal material relating to Betjeman's private life, including literally hundreds of letters written by his wife about their life together and apart.

England under Elizabeth I.A time of war and plague, politics and rebellion, personal heroism and religious fanaticism. When if you were born poor you stayed poor, and the thumbscrews and the rack could be the grim prelude to the executioner's block.But it was also an age that encouraged literary genius, global exploration, and timeless beauty. When the lowly privateer Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe with no reliable navigational instruments and only a drunken, mutinous crew for company. When the Queen's favourite, the wealthy and handsome Robert Dudley, was widely suspected of having killed his wife. And when only the machinations of ruthless intriguers like William Cecil and Francis Walsingham prevented Elizabeth's kingdom from descending into anarchy and political chaos.The Elizabethans is a panoramic, exhilarating depiction of an intensely colourful period by master-historian, A N Wilson. This is what life under Elizabeth I was really like.

Fifteen years ago, Iris Murdoch asked A. This is not Iris Murdoch the Alzheimer's patient, but Iris Murdoch the witty conversationalist, the emotional chaotic and, above all, the writer.

John Henry Newman is recognized as one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the modern age. He was also a man of prayer and deep spirituality. A. N. Wilson's wide-ranging anthology of Newman's prayers, poems and meditations will appeal to all those who are fascinated by this inspirational man. The readings cover the general themes of faith, prayer, the contemplation of Christ, discipleship, the meaning of holiness, and the hope of heaven. In an engaging Introduction, Wilson brings fresh insight to Newman's life and thought. This carefully arranged anthology will provide comfort and sustenance to all those who cherish Newman's writings and to those who are keen to discover one of our best loved spiritual writers for the first time.

The Jesus of Faith and the Jesus of History are two different beings, with two different stories. Wilson reappraises our readings of the Gospels and, with extraordinary insight and clarity, reinterprets the story of Jesus's birth, his life as a carpenter and the dramatic events surrounding his arrest and trial.

Jesus was no Christian, and his friends made no effort to break away from Jesus's religion, Judaism.

A. N. Wilson's sympathetic, readable and brilliantly analytical narrative places John Milton, the greatest poet of the seventeenth century, in the context of his political and religious ideas.

Wilson's subtle, entertaining and frequently provocative critical biography looks back through the indifference which has surrounded Walter Scott in recent times, and the distortions of his Victorian idolaters, to recapture the freshness of Scott as he appeared to his contemporaries.

'An unlikely hero has a master storyteller to tell his tale. The King and the Christmas Tree is a poignant Christmas treat.' Lucy Worsley, historian, broadcaster and authorEvery December, a huge Christmas tree arrives in Trafalgar Square. Bedecked in lights, it is a shimmering, festive beacon in the heart of London. But even more enchanting than the twinkling decorations and scented pine is the story behind the tree; a story of loyalty, friendship and resistance.On a cold evening in 1940, German warships made their way towards Oslo. It seemed inevitable that Norway, like so many other European nations, would soon submit to the Nazi regime. But the country's indomitable King Haakon VII refused to surrender. Making his escape through his country towards the safe haven of Britain, King Haakon became an icon of hope for his people. And so, over seventy years later, the tree in Trafalgar Square remains as an enduring gift of thanks from Norway to the people of Britain.In The King and the Christmas Tree historian A. N. Wilson artfully weaves together this tale of courage and friendship between nations. Richly illustrated and beautifully told, it is a delightful Christmas cracker for everyone, young and old alike.

A celebration of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, showing us that the Queen's qualities of duty, self-sacrifice and love of country were present in her from an early age.'The moments in life of "knowing". On Bognor Beach, with Grandpa England, she had "known" that he, and Papa, and she, would carry something on, something given, something bigger than themselves.'Lilibet: a carefree child, a lover of horses and dogs, devoted to her family. And the girl who would be Queen.A.N. Wilson, one of England's most beloved writers, imagines the Queen reflecting on her early life. We watch as she discovers, at the tender age of ten, that she is heir to the throne. We witness her meet the dashing Prince Phillip of Greece, who she loved steadfastly from the age of fifteen, and see their friendship blossom into passionate love. Above all, we learn of her astonishing sense of vocation and public duty, which grew during the dark years of WWII and her father's subsequent years of ill health.Honouring the life of Her Majesty the Queen and her illustrious reign, Lilibet: The Girl Who Would be Queen is by turns funny, tender and heartfelt.'Superb... captures our Queen better than any biography' - Sunday Telegraph'It's packed with detail and conversations that bring to life all those who have been most important to her.' - Daily Mail