This is the tale of a devastating pandemic, of lives cut painfully short - it's also a love story. Derek, a distinguished designer, and J, a pioneering entrepreneur and creator of Heaven, the iconic gay dance club, met and fell in love more than 40 years ago. In the early 1980s their friends began to get sick and die - AIDS had arrived in their lives. When they got tested, J received what was then a death sentence: he was HIV Positive. While the onset of AIDS strengthened stigma and fear globally, they confronted their crisis with courage, humour and an indomitable resolve to survive. J's battle lasted six long years. Turning to spiritual reflection, yoga, nature - and always to love - Derek describes a transformation of the spirit, how compassion and empathy rose phoenix-like from the flames of sickness and death, and how he and J founded the charity Aids Ark, which has helped to save more than 1,000 HIV Positive lives. This is a story of joy and triumph, of facing universal challenges, of the great rewards that come from giving back. Derek speaks for a generation who lived through a global health crisis that many at the time refused even to acknowledge. His is a powerful story chronicling this extraordinary era.

Louis IX of France reigned as king from 1226 to 1270 and was widely considered an exemplary Christian ruler, renowned for his piety, justice, and charity toward the poor. After his death on crusade, he was proclaimed a saint in 1297, and today Saint Louis is regarded as one of the central figures of early French history and the High Middle Ages. In The Sanctity of Louis IX, Larry F. Field offers the first English-language translations of two of the earliest and most important accounts of the king s life: one composed by Geoffrey of Beaulieu, the king s long-time Dominican confessor, and the other by William of Chartres, a secular clerk in Louis s household who eventually joined the Dominican Order himself. Written shortly after Louis s death, these accounts are rich with details and firsthand observations absent from other works, most notably Jean of Joinville s well-known narrative

The introduction by M. Cecilia Gaposchkin and Sean L. Field provides background information on Louis IX and his two biographers, analysis of the historical context of the 1270s, and a thematic introduction to the texts. An appendix traces their manuscript and early printing histories. The Sanctity of Louis IX also features translations of Boniface VIII s bull canonizing Louis and of three shorter letters associated with the earliest push for his canonization. It also contains the most detailed analysis of these texts, their authors, and their manuscript traditions currently available."

The first complete and annotated English translation of Maimon's delightfully entertaining memoir Solomon Maimon's autobiography has delighted readers for more than two hundred years, from Goethe and George Eliot to Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Here is the first complete and annotated English edition of this enduring and lively work. Born into a down-on-its-luck provincial Jewish family in 1753, Maimon distinguished himself as a prodigy in learning. After a series of picaresque misadventures, he reached Berlin, where he became part of the city's famed Jewish Enlightenment and achieved the philosophical education he so desperately wanted. This edition restores text cut from the abridged 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray-for long the only available English edition-and includes an introduction and notes by Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher that give invaluable insights into Maimon's extraordinary life.

'A lyrical, fascinating, important book. More than just a family story, it is an essay on belonging, denying, pretending, self-deception and, at least for the main characters, survival.' Literary Review 'Simon May's remarkable How to Be a Refugee is a memoir of family secrets with a ruminative twist, one that's more interested in what we keep from ourselves than the ones we conceal from others.' Irish Times The most familiar fate of Jews living in Hitler's Germany is either emigration or deportation to concentration camps. But there was another, much rarer, side to Jewish life at that time: denial of your origin to the point where you manage to erase almost all consciousness of it. You refuse to believe that you are Jewish. How to Be a Refugee is Simon May's gripping account of how three sisters - his mother and his two aunts - grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage. Their very different trajectories included conversion to Catholicism, marriage into the German aristocracy, securing 'Aryan' status with high-ranking help from inside Hitler's regime, and engagement to a card-carrying Nazi. Even after his mother fled to London from Nazi Germany and Hitler had been defeated, her instinct for self-concealment didn't abate. Following the early death of his father, also a German Jewish refugee, May was raised a Catholic and forbidden to identify as Jewish or German or British. In the face of these banned inheritances, May embarks on a quest to uncover the lives of the three sisters as well as the secrets of a grandfather he never knew. His haunting story forcefully illuminates questions of belonging and home - questions that continue to press in on us today.

This is the history of Prudence Bell's family, going back several generations to set the scene for the missionary couple,Herbert and Elizabeth, who went out to Xinzhou, Shanxi Province, China, and were brutally killed in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. It is a thoroughly written historical account,which ends on a high note when Prudence visits the church of the martyrs in 2006, to receive an astonishing welcome, discovering she is the answer to their prayers, and that the church of her great-grandparents has a congregation of over three thousand. Quite harrowing in places, but with an ultimately happy ending, this is an inspiring read for anyone facing the challenges of truly living all-out for Christ in a hostile world.

This is a charming book, describing, in the words of Chris Wright, 'one of the greatest partnerships in church history.' It is a story which John Stott himself hoped would one day be told. It is widely agreed that Stott could not have been half so effective without Frances Whitehead at his side. He invited her to become his Secretary when she was still a young Christian, at that time working for the BBC. Having done secret war work as a mathematician, she brought a good mind as well as determination. Stott relied on her, and she would shoulder responsibility to work on the infrastructure to establish his ideas. She also typed his 50 books from longhand. They are both described (by one of the succession of young graduate Study Assistants) as 'fast, exacting and determined', with Frances matching Stott's gold standard again and again. 'She was as remarkable in her way as John Stott was in his.' They were good friends, and she was named in his Will as 'My friend and Executor'. Neither married and both were completely dedicated to John's ministry. You can't understand his ministry without knowing of Frances Whitehead. This is a very colourful biography looking at Frances Whitehead's ancestry as well as her own interesting life. It includes walk-on parts from George III, Gainsborough, Prince Albert, Florence Nightingale, the Singer family (of Singer sewing Machine fame) and Jacqueline du Pre. It is no ordinary 'Christian biography'. Her family at one stage owned much of Chelsea, including the land on which Harrods now stands. Frances's life story gives us glimpses into the way they worked together, and their shared values. Both were very modest about their contributions, and lived modestly. John Stott lived in a small two-roomed flat, from which he worked. His Study Assistant had a desk in Stott's small bedroom - the desk had been rescued from a skip. Frances worked in a small office looking out onto a brick wall. The book concludes with a summing-up of John Stott's and Frances Whitehead's joint legacy. This includes the founding and establishing of two global movements. Timeline, Family trees, Appendices, and over 30 photographs.

The world was stunned when little-known Karol Wojtyla became the first non-Italian pope for 450 years. As Pope John Paul II, he continued to surprise, directly confronting Communist regimes, flying hundreds of thousands of miles to meet the faithful, and building bridges with other faiths. John Paul II became a bete noire in the eyes of liberals for his staunch refusal to accept contraception or the ordination of women. But for others he was a Churchillian figure who took on the forces of godlessness and moral relativism. He gained a stature that left secular statesmen in his shadow. Love him or loathe him, few could deny that he was a man of rare courage. He survived two assassination attempts, fought off cancer and waged a very public battle with Parkinson's disease. Seven years after his death he continues to exert a hold over the Church and to inspire an almost cult-like devotion.

Offering an inspiring mix of history and biography, Saints on Earth tells the stories of the diverse people commemorated in the Common Worship calendar of Holy Days, with over 250 saints' days, festivals and commemorations that greatly enrich the Christian year. This wide-ranging selection of spiritually significant men and women features Celtic and Catholic saints, Reformers, Tractarians, bishops and missionaries together with poets, writers, martyrs, social reformers, kings and queens. Recent heroes and heroines of faith, both Anglican and from other Christian traditions, are celebrated alongside those who inspired the Early Church. This versatile companion is a rich source of inspiration for preaching and leading prayers and worship throughout the year. It is now updated to include figures added to the Common Worship calendar in recent years.

Douglas Dales's Divine Remaking marks the 800th anniversary of the birth of St Bonaventure in 1217. Bonaventure distilled and transformed a rich inheritance of patristic and medieval exegesis of the Bible developed within the monastic tradition and in the university schools in Paris, Oxford and elsewhere. While teaching in Paris and then leading the Franciscans as their Minister General, Bonaventure wrote a substantial commentary on the Gospel of St Luke. This commentary is an eminent example of how his understanding of the Bible lay at the root of all that he taught and wrote. Bonaventure's writing style reflects the beauty and ornate detail of contemporaneous works of art, stained glass, carvings in cathedrals and illuminated manuscripts. His writings, like the art of his day, are superb expressions of Christian theology and vision. Bonaventure had a formidable memory, and his capacity to draw from across the whole Latin Bible is extraordinary, instructive and enriching. His well-ordered mind was balanced, however, by a finely tuned spiritual and pastoral intuition, which makes his approach to the Gospels applicable and relevant to the reader of today. Divine Remaking is a bridge into Bonaventure's thought; it allows his insight into St Luke's Gospel to be understood by anyone seeking the divine truth in today's world.

Andrew Young was one of the most original, inventive and paradoxical poets of the twentieth-century. C.S. Lewis called him, 'A modern Marvell and a modern marvel', and Philip Larkin remarked that, 'His works are in no danger of being forgotten'. Regarded as 'a major poet' by academic scholars, Young's prestige in this critical biography is taken one step further and declared a 'great' poet. Dr Richard Ormrod criticises and analyses Andrew Young's poetry to establish this greatness, especially in his lengthy masterpiece, Out of the World and Back. It also explores his fascinating life and personality: a wry, whimsical, erudite, complex man; a theist and a pantheist; an ironist and wordsmith; and a fervent naturalist, less at ease with people. Anyone interested in, or studying twentieth-century poetry at any level, will find this book invaluable and its claims challenging. Lovers of plants, birds and animals will be stunned by Young's deeply observant, unsentimental nature poetry, and by the two witty and engaging prose 'flower' books, A Prospect of Flowers and A Retrospect of Flowers - both hardy perennials.

Now available in paperback, Through My Father's Eyes takes an intimate look at Billy Graham's incredible life and unstoppable calling through the unique perspective of his son Franklin. As a beloved evangelist and a respected man of God, Billy Graham stated his purpose in life, and it never wavered: to help people find a personal relationship with God through a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. This was a calling that only increased over time, and Billy embraced it fully throughout his active ministry and beyond. Yet Billy pursued his life's work, as many men do, amid a similarly significant calling to be a loving husband and father. While most people knew Billy Graham as America's pastor, Franklin Graham knew him in a different way, as a dad. And while present and future generations will come to their own conclusions about Billy Graham and the legacy that his commitment to Christ has left behind, no one can speak more insightfully or authoritatively on that subject than a son who grew up in the shadow of his father's life and the examples of his father's love. This vulnerable book is a look at both Billy Graham the evangelist and Billy Graham the father and the impact he had on a son who walked in his father's steps while also becoming his own man, leading ministries around the world, all of it based on the foundational lessons his father taught him. "My father left behind a testimony to God," says Franklin, "a legacy not buried in a grave but still pointing people to a heaven-bound destiny. The Lord will say to my father, and to all who served Him obediently, Well done, good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:21)."

Poet's Corner is Malcolm Guite's delectable column that appears on the back page of the Church Times each week. This second collection brings together more than seventy columns created from little glimpses and reflections from all corners of the country, the musings of a poet's mind, and the corners and alleyways of our literary heritage. Malcolm's lucid, perceptive and imaginative columns follow a similar pattern to the sonnets for which he is so renowned, with a sense of development, of a turn or volta part way through, and a sense that the end revisits and re-reads the opening. They draw together everyday events and encounters, landscape, journeys, poetry, stories, memory and a sense of the sacred, fusing them to create richly satisfying portraits of the familiar that at the same time open a doorway into a new and enchanted world.