Pol suffers from a very rare hormonal disorder that ages him erratically; when he was thirteen, his body aged ten years overnight, and now in his early thirties, he still has the outward appearance of a twenty-three-year-old. But with his condition dormant, Pol and his wife Caroline manage to live an ordinary life in Kilburn. They're happy enough, even if having a young child has put something of a strain on their marriage. That and Pol's obsessive interest in the writings of an obscure seventeenth-century Puritan prophet, Bartholomew Playfere, and his premonitions of ecological disaster and the end of the world. But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere, he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young - that the 'hoarist' habit of violence, their need to conquer, has also affected how they treat the planet. The leader of this popular movement predicts an imminent inter-generational conflict - father against son, mother against daughter - that echoes Playfere's own prophecies. Against this increasingly fraught backdrop, Pol's dormant condition threatens to resurface - putting both the safety and happiness of his family at risk.

This book unpacks the history of British-Israelism in the UK. Remarkably, this subject has had very little attention: remarkable, because at its height in the post-war era, the British-Israelist movement could claim to have tens of thousands of card-carrying adherents and counted amongst its membership admirals, peers, television personalities, MPs and members of the royal family including the King of England. British-Israelism is the belief that the people of Britain are the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. It originated in the writing of a Scottish historian named John Wilson, who toured the country in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Providing a guide to the history of British-Israelism as a movement, including the formation of the British-Israel World Federation, Covenant Publishing, and other institutions, the book explores the complex ways in which British-Israelist thought mirrored developments in ethnic British nationalism during the Twentieth Century. A detailed study on the subject of British-Israelism is necessary, because British-Israelists constitute an essential element of British life during the most violent and consequential century of its history. As such, this will be a vital resource for any scholar of Minority Religions, New Religious Movements, Nationalism and British Religious History.

This book unpacks the history of British-Israelism in the UK. Remarkably, this subject has had very little attention: remarkable, because at its height in the post-war era, the British-Israelist movement could claim to have tens of thousands of card-carrying adherents and counted amongst its membership admirals, peers, television personalities, MPs and members of the royal family including the King of England. British-Israelism is the belief that the people of Britain are the descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. It originated in the writing of a Scottish historian named John Wilson, who toured the country in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Providing a guide to the history of British-Israelism as a movement, including the formation of the British-Israel World Federation, Covenant Publishing, and other institutions, the book explores the complex ways in which British-Israelist thought mirrored developments in ethnic British nationalism during the Twentieth Century. A detailed study on the subject of British-Israelism is necessary, because British-Israelists constitute an essential element of British life during the most violent and consequential century of its history. As such, this will be a vital resource for any scholar of Minority Religions, New Religious Movements, Nationalism and British Religious History.

"Rapturous, disruptive and quietly, complexly devastating" Eley Williams "This is a time-tumbling, unexpected and arresting novel of apocalypse, upheaval and familial love" Sean Hewitt Pol suffers from a very rare hormonal disorder that ages him erratically: when he was thirteen, his body aged ten years overnight, and now in his early thirties, he still has the outward appearance of a twenty-three-year-old. But with his condition dormant, Pol and his wife Caroline manage to live an ordinary life in London. They're happy enough, even if having a young child has put something of a strain on their marriage. That and Pol's obsessive interest in the writings of an obscure seventeenth-century Puritan prophet, Bartholomew Playfere, and his premonitions of ecological disaster and the end of the world. But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere, he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young - that the 'hoarist' habit of violence, their need to conquer, has also affected how they treat the planet. The leader of this popular movement predicts an imminent inter-generational conflict - father against son, mother against daughter - that echoes Playfere's own prophecies. Against this increasingly fraught backdrop, Pol's dormant condition threatens to resurface - putting both the safety and happiness of his family at risk.