Religion & Philosophy

A specially published book of 70 inspirational essays written by internationally renowned educator, historians and scholars marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - to be read one a day.

Abiding is not a word we have much use for in everyday conversation. Yet Ben Quash shows that this one concept is central to the Christian life. Quash skilfully and creatively explores the implications that 'abiding' has for our bodies and minds, our relationships and communities, and our spiritual lives.

Discover the keys to a life of success, fulfilment, wholeness and plenty

Many of us live in a mindset of lack and limitation, focusing on the things we don't have. Too often we allow our egos to drive our thoughts and actions, preventing us from reaching something greater: a true sense of inner peace, acceptance and fulfilment.

In Abundance, international bestselling author Deepak Chopra offers a simple seven-step plan to help you reset your focus, become the agent of your own life and strive for life's unbounded possibilities. Demonstrating how to work past self-generated feelings of limitation and providing meditations to help you focus your attention and intuition, this is your guide to a life of true power, prosperity and plenty.

Over two millennia ago, a Greek philosopher had a number of wondrous insights that paved the way to cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. Anaximander's legacy includes the revolutionary idea that the earth floats in a void, that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms, that animals evolved, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and to the progress of knowledge. 

In this elegant work, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander's overlooked legacy to modern science. He examines Anaximander as a scientist interested in shedding light on the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in his rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. Anaximander celebrates the radical lack of certainty that defines the scientific quest for knowledge.

The philosophy of Ancient Greece provides the background of Western ethical thought and politics. In this approachable introduction, Hugh Griffith, a leading translator of Plato, covers the main ground from the Pre-Socratics through Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans.

With wit and insight the Dalai Lama shows how ancient truths can help us to live happy and fulfilled lives at a time when science and technology have taken over from religious belief.

A marvellous insight into the mind of a devout Christian, a colossal figure of the nineteenth century. It is, moreover, a great spiritual autobiography, laying out the development of John Henry Newman's religious opinions up to the year 1845 when he finally converted to Roman Catholicism.

The philosophy of Aristotle dominated Western thought for over a thousand years. Above all, Aristotle is credited with the founding of logic. He divided human knowledge into separate categories, and enabled our understanding of the world to develop in a systematic fashion.

How do we say what we truly mean? How can we learn to listen with compassion and understanding? How do we find true connection with one another? Celebrated Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh shares the five steps to truly mindful communication. Drawing on his experience working with couples, families, colleagues and even on international conflict, the world's most famous monk has created a simple guide to communicating with yourself, others and the world.

One of the world's great spiritual leaders offers his practical wisdom and advice on how we can overcome everyday human problems and achieve lasting happiness.

No thinker has had a more profound influence on western civilisation than Aristotle. His work has been one of the main props of our culture for over two thousand years. Underlying all of it is a conviction that system and order can be found to govern everything, even human conduct. In the Ethics and Politics Aristotle examines what is the best kind of life, and what is the best kind of society for making this possible.

Essential life lessons from the world's most famous monk. Through a beautiful collection of autobiographical stories and teachings, At Home in the World tells the remarkable life of the beloved Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh. With his signature clarity and warmth, he shares tales from his childhood in rural Vietnam through to his travels teaching the world the art of mindfulness.

A rites-of-passage story that attempts to shed a largely humorous, but sometime serious light, on the relations between an ethnic minority and the wider community. The work is also a nostalgic record of growing up in a Jewish community in the East End during the postwar period.

A remarkable insight into the life and work of the late Cardinal Hume, written by some of his closest friends.

Bruce Lee's daughter illuminates her father's most powerful life philosophies, and how we can apply his teachings to our daily lives. 'Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless like water' Bruce Lee is a cultural icon, world renowned for his martial arts and film legacy. But Lee was also a deeply philosophical thinker, believing that martial arts are more than just an exercise in physical discipline - they are a perfect metaphor for personal growth.

In Be Water, My Friend, Shannon Lee shares previously untold stories from her father's life along with the concepts at the core of his teachings. Each chapter reveals a lesson from Bruce Lee, expanding on the foundation of his iconic 'be water' philosophy to reveal a path to an enlightened way of being. This is an inspirational call to action to consider our lives with new eyes and a testament to Lee's unique power to ignite our imaginations and transform our lives.

Relationships have the ability to infuse our lives with the magic of intimacy and connection. But often we can find ourselves chasing unavailable love, putting other's needs before our own all the while abandoning the one who needs us most - ourselves.

From Sheleana Aiyana, spiritual writer and founder of Rising Woman, comes a transformational inner-work journey to heal lifelong relationship patterns and reclaim power over your life.

Becoming the One is your invitation to make peace with your past, stand in your worth and find your way home to yourself.

The book is based on a radio 3 series in which Joan Bakewell discussed many aspects of belief with some of today’s most influential thinkers including Rowan Williams, Karen Armstrong, Philip Pullman, and Richard Dawkins.

From the award-winning author of The Trauma Cleaner comes an exploration of the power of belief. This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is, and the world as we'd like it to be. How they can stunt us - or save us. Some of the people you will meet believe in things most people don't. Ghosts. UFOs. Heaven and the Devil. The literal creation of the universe in six days. Others believe in things most people would like to. Dying with autonomy. Facing one's own transgressions with an open heart. Intensely personal and gorgeously written Krasnostein talks with her characteristic compassion and empathy to these believers - and finds out what happens when their beliefs crash into her own. 

Beyond Good and Evil confirmed Nietzsche's position as the towering European philosopher of his age. The work dramatically rejects traditional Western thought with its notions of truth and God, good and evil. Nietzsche seeks to demonstrate that the Christian world is steeped in a false piety and infected with a 'slave morality'.

With wit and energy, he turns from this critique to a philosophy that celebrates the present and demands that the individual impose their own 'will to power' upon the world.

Friends Big Panda and Tiny Dragon journey through the seasons of the year together, day and night, in rain and in sun. Travelling through nature, they find hope and inspiration in the world around them, realising that even in the darkest of days, Spring will always return. 

Feel the calming influence of Big Panda, who reminds us of the bigger picture while appreciating the simplicity of small moments.

Explore your surroundings with the inquisitive eye of Tiny Dragon, our friend who is big in heart if not in stature.

And on their journey through the ever-changing seasons, join these two friends as they learn how to live in the moment, be at peace with uncertainty, and find the strength to overcome life's obstacles, together.

Join Big Panda and Tiny Dragon as they set off on an extraordinary adventure in this companion to the global bestselling phenomenon Big Panda and Tiny Dragon.

Although content in their temple high up in the mountains, Tiny Dragon realises that something feels incomplete.

So it is that they decide to make a journey together, to new and distant lands. As they encounter dangers and challenges, they learn that everything they need is already inside them and that change, though sometimes scary, is possible and, with patience, can lead to better things.

Did Jesus marry and have children? If so, what happened to his family? Are descendants of his still alive today? From access to archives and repositories, the author casts new light on the truth behind the Holy Grail, and gives a history of the Knights Templars of Jerusalem.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama have been friends for many, many years. Between them, they have endured exile, violence and oppression. And in the face of these hardships, they have continued to radiate compassion, humour and above all, joy.

To celebrate His Holiness's eightieth birthday, Archbishop Tutu travelled to the Dalai Lama's home in Dharamsala. The two men spent a week discussing a single burning question: how do we find joy in the face of suffering?

This book is a gift from two of the most important spiritual figures of our time. Full of love, warmth and hope, The Book of Joy offers us the chance to experience their journey from first embrace to final goodbye.

A N Wilson explores how readers and thinkers have approached the Bible, and how it might be read today. He challenges the way fundamentalists - whether believers or non-believers - have misused the Bible, either by neglecting and failing to recognize its cultural significance, or by using it as a weapon against those with whom they disagree.

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was nineteen he was outed to his parents, and was forced to either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality, or risk losing family, friends and the God he had prayed to every day of his life.

From getting ready in the morning, through heading to work, going to a party, having sex and falling asleep, Smith provides an hour-by-hour commentary of what history's greatest philosophers have said about the meaning behind everything we do. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

An understanding of Buddha, his teachings, religion and philosophy.

A brief look at the teachings of Buddha and Buddhism.

The late Gerald Priestland, broadcaster and writer, plays the devil's advocate and presses the case against the existence of God.

Adrian Bailey believes that the influence of psychological interpretations posed by Freud and Jung have been detrimental to a true understanding of mankind`s religious origins. Here he revives a long-discarded nineteenth-century theory that all myths, religions and folktales can be traced to one source - the sun.

Vanessa wakes from a coma to find she has lost ten years of memories and that she has become a person she does not recognise. Toussaint, a Haitian immigrant, is haunted by voices. Thomas no longer knows how to answer questions and a retired teacher loses the use of her right hand because of an inexplicable pain.

Noga Arikha began studying these patients and their confounding symptoms in order to explore how our physical experiences inform our identities. Soon after she began her work, the question took on unexpected urgency, as Arikha's own mother began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease.

Weaving together stories of her subjects' troubles and her mother's decline, Arikha searches for some meaning in the science she has set out to study. 

It was one of the most startling moments in the modern history of the City of London. In 2011, the Occupy movement set up camp around St Paul's Cathedral. Giles Fraser, who was Canon Chancellor of the Cathedral, gave them his support. It ended in disaster. This remarkable book is the story of the personal crisis that followed, and its surprising consequences. As Giles Fraser found himself crushed between the forces of protest, the needs of the church and the implacable City of London, he resigned, and was plunged into depression.

As his life fell apart and he battled with ideas of suicide, Fraser found himself by chance one day in Liverpool, outside the great Victorian synagogue once presided over by a distant ancestor. Suddenly he realized that there was a great deal he did not know about himself, about his relatives and about his Jewish roots. Fraser calls this book 'a ghost story' and it is a book which is indeed filled with many ghosts. His search into his family's Jewish past makes this both a fascinating personal story and a wonderful piece of writing about the healing power of theology, in individual lives and across religious divides. It is a book about the deepest, most ancient elements in our culture, and the most modern and personal. It is throughout alive with the charm and intellectual vigour which have made Fraser such an admired and controversial preacher and broadcaster.

In the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance. 

In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Peter Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and astounding willingness to mobilize well-directed force. Christendom's achievement was not, or not only, to define official Christianity, but - from its scholars and its lawyers, to its provincial officials and missionaries in far-flung corners of the continent - to transform it into an institution that wielded effective religious authority across nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.

An anthology of Prayers, Hymns and Readings in everyday use.

Joachim opens the 24 doors of a magic Advent calendar and pieces together the story of a little girl taken on a journey from Norway to Bethlehem through 2,000 years of history.

Christmas needs no introduction - but its rich history is often forgotten. These forty short pieces on individual traditions will help you discover the secrets behind the festive season, revealing the intriguing origins of the traditional festivities.