‘Steeple Chasing is a beautiful and brilliant book; written with such care and deep, abiding interest in its subject matter as to entrance the enthusiast and amateur alike. I loved it.’ – Fergus Butler-Gallie

‘Ross has always had a quiet charm, and it is perhaps displayed best in this book. ‘ – The Scotsman

From the author of A Tomb With a View – Scottish Non-Fiction book of the Year

Churches are all around us. Their steeples remain landmarks in our towns, villages and cities, even as their influence and authority has waned. They contain art and architectural wonders – one huge gallery scattered, like a handful of jewels, across these isles.

Award-winning writer Peter Ross sets out to tell their stories, and through them a story of Britain. Join him as he visits the unassuming Norfolk church which contains a disturbing secret, and London’s mighty cathedrals with their histories of fire and love. Meet cats and bats, monks and druids, angels of oak and steel.

Steeple Chasing, though it sometimes strikes an elegiac note, is a song of praise. It celebrates churches for their beauty and meaning, and for the tales they tell. It is about people as much as place, flesh and bone not just flint and stone. From the painted hells of Surrey to the holy wells of Wales, consider this a travel book . . . with bells on.

Praise for Peter Ross

‘Ross is a wonderfully evocative writer, deftly capturing a sense of place and history, while bringing a deep humanity to his subject. He has written a delightful book.’ – The Guardian

‘Fascinating . . . Ross makes a likeably idiosyncratic guide and one finishes the book feeling strangely optimistic about the inevitable.’ – The Observer

‘The author’s humanity has acted as a beacon of light in the darkness.’ – The Sunday Times

Christianity has been central to the lives of the people of Britain and Ireland for almost 2,000 years. It has given us laws, customs, traditions and our national character. From a persecuted minority in Roman Britannia through the ‘golden age’ of Anglo-Saxon monasticism, the devastating impact of the Vikings, the alliance of church and state after the Norman Conquest to the turmoil of the Reformation that saw the English monarch replace the Pope and the Puritan Commonwealth that replaced the king, it is a tangled, tumultuous story of faith and achievement, division and bloodshed.

In If These Stones Could Talk Peter Stanford journeys through England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to churches, abbeys, chapels and cathedrals, grand and humble, ruined and thriving, ancient and modern, to chronicle how a religion that began in the Middle East came to define our past and shape our present. In exploring the stories of these buildings that are still so much a part of the landscape, the details of their design, the treasured objects that are housed within them, the people who once stood in their pulpits and those who sat in their pews, he builds century by century the narrative of what Christianity has meant to the nations of the British Isles, how it is reflected in the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the sense it gives about who we are and how we live with each other.

‘There is no better navigator through the space in which art, culture and spirituality meet than Peter Stanford’ Cole Moreton, Independent on Sunday

‘A stunningly well-written, funny, heartrending and utterly gripping memoir about learning how to live with who we are. Read it. Read it now’ Nathan Filer

Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church in south Wales and then south-east England. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict and the fear of damnation.

After a devastating loss of faith in his late teens, Matt began his search for salvation elsewhere, turning to books before developing a growing relationship with alcohol and drugs. He became addicted to crack and heroin in his early twenties, an ordeal that stretched over a decade and culminated in a period of hopeless darkness.

Recklessly honest, and as funny as it is grave, Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction. But ultimately it is about looking for answers to life’s big questions in all the wrong places, how hope can arrive in the most unexpected forms, and how the stories we tell might help us survive.

‘I tore through this brilliant, fearless book. From the first page to the last, it’s funny, insightful and beautifully written’ Joe Dunthorne

Yet for Richard Morris, post-war parsonages were the happy backdrop of his childhood. In Evensong he searches for what it was that drew his father and hundreds like him towards ordination as they came home from war in 1945. Along the way we meet all kinds of people – archbishops, chaplains, campaigners, bell-ringers, bureaucrats, archaeologists, gravediggers, architects, scroungers – and follow some of them to dark places.

Part personal odyssey, part lyrical history, Evensong asks what churches stand for and what they can tell us; it explores why Anglicanism has often been fractious, and why it has become so diffuse. Spanning over two thousand years, it draws on new discoveries, reflects on the current state of the Church in England and ends amid the messy legacies of colonialism and empire.

Christianity has been central to the lives of the people of Britain and Ireland for almost 2,000 years. It has given us laws, customs, traditions and our national character. From a persecuted minority in Roman Britannia through the ‘golden age’ of Anglo-Saxon monasticism, the devastating impact of the Vikings, the alliance of church and state after the Norman Conquest to the turmoil of the Reformation that saw the English monarch replace the Pope and the Puritan Commonwealth that replaced the king, it is a tangled, tumultuous story of faith and achievement, division and bloodshed.

In If These Stones Could Talk Peter Stanford journeys through England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to churches, abbeys, chapels and cathedrals, grand and humble, ruined and thriving, ancient and modern, to chronicle how a religion that began in the Middle East came to define our past and shape our present. In exploring the stories of these buildings that are still so much a part of the landscape, the details of their design, the treasured objects that are housed within them, the people who once stood in their pulpits and those who sat in their pews, he builds century by century the narrative of what Christianity has meant to the nations of the British Isles, how it is reflected in the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the sense it gives about who we are and how we live with each other.

‘There is no better navigator through the space in which art, culture and spirituality meet than Peter Stanford’ Cole Moreton, Independent on Sunday

‘An example of how one woman can change the world by telling the truth about her life with unflinching, relentless courage’ GLENNON DOYLE

Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with racism in America came at age seven, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools and neighbourhoods, Austin ‘had to learn what it means to love Blackness,’ a journey that led to her becoming a writer, speaker and expert helping organisations practice genuine inclusion. In this bestselling memoir, she writes beautifully and powerfully about her journey to self-worth and how we can all contribute to racial justice.

‘A leading new voice on racial justice’ LAYLA F SAAD, author of ME AND WHITE SUPREMACY

‘Most people say, “that books has legs”; I measure the impact of a book by how often I throw it across the room. [Austin’s book] has serious wings. It broke me open’ BRENE BROWN

‘A deeply personal celebration of blackness that simultaneously sheds new light on racial injustice and inequality while offering hope for a better future’ SHONDALAND

Meeting believers and non-believers, architects and archaeologists, the cleaner who dusts the monuments and the mason who judges stone by its taste, we delve deep into the private lives and the uncertain future of these ever-voyaging Ships of Heaven.

‘Somerville paints word pictures of exquisite quality’
Church Times

Pope Francis won the hearts of Catholics all over the world when he was elected in March 2013, with his natural humility and commitment to putting those who are poor at the centre of his mission.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio – the 265th successor of St Peter and the first non-European Pope in over 1200 years – has encouraged people to live simpler lives and shown the world a more compassionate face of Catholicism, bringing fresh hope for a renewal in the Church.

In his own life, he has long demonstrated both his belief in simplicity and his concern for those who are poor, refusing to live in palatial accommodation during his tenure as a cardinal in Buenos Aires, riding the bus to work and even persuading the diocese to allow a group of poor missionaries to live in the official residence.

‘Pope Francis in His Own Words’ has been compiled to give Catholics and non-Catholics alike an insight into the thoughts of the new pontiff.