Sunday is Radio 4's flagship religious affairs programme, providing on-the-spot reporting, in-depth interviews and informed analysis of the major issues and their far-reaching developments, both in Britain and throughout the world. Marking half a century of the programme, here are eyewitness accounts of landmark events, accompanied by astute critical reflection on their significance by Edward Stourton. Set against an international backdrop of political, social and cultural upheavals, Sunday charts the events and their repercussions as they happened, and considers how they have changed the world as we see it today. From popes and archbishops to the many ordinary Christians who have made a difference, from the rise of Islam to the decline in active church membership and the onslaught of the New Atheists, from internal battles between conservatives and liberals to engagement with issues of justice, peace and identity affecting people all over the world, Sunday will take you back to what it was like as these things emerged and evolved. Sunday will enable you to see the role of religion in clearer and sharper focus, and to better appreciate its implications for our world, both now and in the future.

'A clear-eyed and compelling account of a life, told with honesty.' - Luke Jennings 'A book brimming with surprises and insight.' - Nicholas Coleridge 'Calmly, bravely written... deployed with generosity and modesty.' - Adam Nicholson ------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward Stourton was born into a life of privilege. The son of expat parents in colonial Nigeria, Ed was sent back to Britain to be educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth, at the time when, it was latter revealed, the school and monastery were the setting for serial abuse cases. He then went up to Cambridge, where his life as an undergraduate gave him access to a network of future ministers, judges and newspaper editors. As a young journalist, he reported first from party conferences and picket lines and then from war zones, witnessing the events making international headlines, from Haiti to Hong Kong, before returning home to join the infighting on BBC Radio 4's Today. During this time, the Empire has given way to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, men-only clubs have been replaced by Me Too, and instead of a choice selection of voices on a handful of radio and television channels, we have millions of voices on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. The world has changed, and so has Ed. Brought face to face with the author of his obituary and his own inevitable mortality, Ed is prompted to reflect on the life he has led and the events that have shaped him. In Confessions, he describes this remarkable journey with candour, humour and the insight that only forty years' experience of writing and reporting can provide. 'A searingly honest insight into the life of one of our great journalists. Hugely entertaining too.' John Humphries

'Essential reading for anyone anxious to understand the background to the Brexit debate' Tablet With all the political infighting in British politics over Brexit dominating the news cycle, we almost forgot who we were negotiating with. Now, in Blind Man's Brexit, we get to see and hear exactly what was going on in the corridors of power in Brussels, and how the EU comprehensively outmanoeuvred the UK government. When Lode Desmet met Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's representative on Brexit, about filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the negotiations, he could never have imagined the unique access he would be granted and the extraordinary story that he would end up filming. As the cameras rolled, Lode sat in on private conversations with chief negotiator Michel Barnier and saw first hand how Theresa May's government's negotiating positions were knocked back time after time. The results were aired in the BBC documentary series Brexit: Behind Closed Doors. Written with distinguished political commentator Edward Stourton, who also provides a British perspective on events, Blind Man's Brexit goes beyond the documentary to reveal a staggering and unprecedented failure of diplomacy on one side and contrasts the very clearly defined aims and goals of the EU side. Many books have attempted to tell the story of what happened, but this one has completely unfiltered access to events as viewed by the EU, and shows exactly why, how and where the Brexit negotiations went so spectacularly wrong, resulting in our departure from the EU being delayed beyond 29 March 2019 as the UK was left in limbo and its political system in disarray.

Author, journalist and BBC presenter Ed Stourton delves into the Hodder & Stoughton archives to tell the human story of 150 years of publishing. From the day in June 1868 when Matthew Henry Hodder and Thomas Wilberforce Stoughton first founded the company, through numerous encounters with authors from John le Carre to Jodi Picoult, and several staff sports days - this will be an entertaining and enlightening read for any book lover.

"An engaging, balanced and thoroughly researched history. It is often a moving and amusing tale containing plenty of mavericks and colourful episodes." (Lawrence James, The Times) Auntie's War is a love letter to radio. The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British institution unlike any other, and its story during the Second World War is also our story. This was Britain's first total war, engaging the whole nation, and the wireless played a crucial role in it. For the first time, news of the conflict reached every living room - sometimes almost as it happened; and at key moments: - Chamberlain's announcement of war - The Blitz - The D-Day landings - De Gaulle's broadcasts from exile - Churchill's fighting speeches Radio offered an incomparable tool for propaganda; it was how coded messages, both political and personal, were sent across Europe, and it was a means of sending less than truthful information to the enemy. Edward Stourton is a sharp-eyed, wry and affectionate companion on the BBC's wartime journey, investigating archives, diaries, letters and memoirs to examine what the BBC was and what it stood for. Auntie's War is an incomparable insight into why we have the broadcast culture we do today. A BBC RADIO 4: BOOK OF THE WEEK

The mountain paths are as treacherous as they are steep - the more so in the dark and in winter. Even for the fit the journey is a formidable challenge. Hundreds of those who climbed through the Pyrenees during the Second World War were malnourished and exhausted after weeks on the run hiding in barns and attics. Many never even reached the Spanish border. Today their bravery and endurance is commemorated each July by a trek along the Chemin de la Liberte - the toughest and most dangerous of wartime routes. From his fellow pilgrims Edward Stourton uncovers stories of midnight scrambles across rooftops and drops from speeding trains; burning Lancasters, doomed love affairs, horrific murder and astonishing heroism. The lives of the men, women and children who were drawn by the war to the Pyrenees often read as breathtakingly exciting adventure, but they were led against a background of intense fear, mounting persecution and appalling risk. Drawing on interviews with the few remaining survivors and the families of those who were there, Edward Stourton's vivid history of this little-known aspect of the Second World War is shocking, dramatic and intensely moving.

'If you are accompanied by a dog you can talk to anyone, and anyone can talk to you - about anything ...' And they do. Edward Stourton's walks with, Kudu, his dog, become an opportunity for wonderfully unlikely encounters, and reflecting on the world from the dog-walker's perspective proves remarkably illuminating. Ed and Kudu's small trips to the park offer up big insights into romantic attachment, honour and heroism, guilt and depression, our sense of duty, beauty and the hard facts of life's pecking order. Diary of a Dog-Walker is witty, wise and will be utterly irresistible to any man or woman with a dog.