The West is in decline? Chapter One of Aphrodite Rising deals with the thinkers who believe it is. The rest of the book advances a brand new idea: the West rests on two strands of thought inherited from its Greek origins - the Platonist (spiritual) and Aristotelian (materialist and scientific). Both are needed but one - the Platonist - has been eroded and the result is a lopsidedness leading to decay. The concept of a Creator-God is at the heart of the decline - it poses too many problems for the Aristotelian wing. The problem with atheism is explained and the evolution of Western consciousness traced, with a chapter on the inability of science to account for it. The book also points out that materialism and the spiritual aren't incompatible. Other chapters explain Platonism, with the practical example of Oscar Wilde who became a Platonist in jail. Finally, the book suggests how Platonism and Christianity can be brought together, hence Aphrodite Rising.

A novel with a unique theme. In advancing old age, Porlock sells up and sets off to live more fully for the first and last time. He begins by looking for Gideon's God. What is it? The search takes him from an inn on an island off the coast of south west England to the wine country of Tuscany. On the way he meets Kate who has her own ideas about their relationship. Throughout, Porlock has insights into something beyond the everyday. What is his quest really all about?

Capperbar is about those moments of uplift, experienced by millions, which can be called spiritual or mildly mystical. Sometimes the triggers are the simple things of life - shadows on a wall, sunshine on a stair (the title poem even takes us onto the gun deck of a warship). More often they are love, art, landscape. Words too can often do so. Poetry therefore can also be a way to experience the spiritual.

Counter-Cosmos is a book about mysticism with a scientific bent: what science denies, so does the author. The West today is unprecedentedly unspiritual, but the spiritual is part of mankind's natural make-up: denying it leaves us incomplete and in danger of disintegration. The book deals mainly with Western mysticism - begins with Einstein, in fact - and so is comprehensible to Western readers. Part One strips mysticism down to its basic elements: there's nothing necessarily supernatural about it at all. What is it? (What is it not?) What causes it? What is it like? What are the benefits? What grades are there? How many people are mystics? Can you be one without knowing it? Part Two is more personal and explores those minor mystical events which light up daily life. Partly, this is done through anecdotes from the author's experience as the writer of a series of TV science documentaries. Partly it is also done through short, blog-like analyses and comments on the everyday happenings of a singlesummer. Counter-Cosmos is sequel to Undertones: Mysticism in an Age of Umber.

Undertones adds something new and original to a subject already widely written about and of world wide interest. Books on mysticism have a ready readership, but Undertones broadens its appeal: it explores the idea that moments of mild mysticism can be, and are, experienced by millions of people. These moments are invariably life enhancing yet are almost always mistaken for something else. Knowing what they are is, in itself, a life changing experience. The theme is explored mainly through the lives and works of 19th century artists, writers and composers - because that, astonishingly, was the most mystical age in all English history. This in itself is a major revelation. Undertones began as a series of essays for an Ivy League website - Brown University's www.victorianweb.org. It grew gradually as the mystical tendencies of people such as Wordsworth and Tennyson, Chesterton and Vaughan Williams, Hopkins and Cardinal Newman were uncovered.