Search results for ""author john symons""

The Devil's Dance transcends categories. It is an exciting, original story, full of menace and very moving. The story is told in turn by two teenagers, Jake and Samuel. It begins with a dream, like a musical overture, which contains the themes to be developed in the rest of the work and describes events that took place two or three hundred years earlier. Gradually the reader understands the horror of what is happening. Jake and Samuel's story unrolls over Hallowe'en, with eerie and, finally, shocking events. The book describes movingly the love of Jake and his mother for his father, who is afflicted by a terrible illness, and their heart-searing loss when he dies. When Jake understands that he may himself inherit the illness and indeed pass it on to his children he struggles to come to terms with the appalling fact. The reader shares the boy's turmoil. The story has several strands: Jake's personal loss; his friendship with Samuel and his loving family; and the mystery of the nocturnal rituals that take place in a deserted hospital on the edge of Dartmoor. Between the episodes of adventure in this well paced story, there are peaceful and pastoral descriptions, particularly of Samuel's home and special family occasions. The boys' nocturnal walks together and alone are also full of atmosphere. The climax of the story is menacing and cruel, and its immediate aftermath no less shocking. The book is charmingly illustrated with line drawings by Tracy Davy.

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A Tear in the Curtain is a historical novel. The story tells of three families, British, Hungarian and Russian, whose lives are linked for fifty years during the Cold War and afterwards.Their experiences reflect the danger, bravery, heartbreak, joy and sorrow of those days when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain. Four eleven year-olds spend an idyllic seaside holiday in England in August 1956, just before the Suez crisis and the Hungarian Uprising intensify the Cold War. John Symons skilfully portrays how world events, including the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Solidarity movement in Poland in the early 1980s, the end of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991, affected the lives of the four children and their families in their respective countries. The author draws on Russian documents not yet available in English to paint a picture of the Cold War in human terms and to show its origins in the rise of Lenin, Hitler and Stalin and the Second World War. A Tear in the Curtain can be read with pleasure and interest by three generations. It is narrated in simple, clear and fast-moving language that engages young people, including those taking GCSE history. A fifteen year-old boy with dyslexia was absorbed by the story and read it, twice, in thirty six hours. He said how much it helped him to see the meaning of Hitler and the Second World War which he was studying for his exams. His mother loved the book's atmosphere and poetic sense of hope amid the fear and anxiety of the events described. And, for an older generation, A Tear in the Curtain expresses the meaning of all that shaped their lives after 1945. John Symons is a classical and modern historian with a passionate interest in Russia and the Soviet Union. He has travelled widely in Eastern Europe and Russia and has visited a former GULAG prison camp in Siberia. Described by a British Ambassador to Russia as 'an enthusiastic Russophile', his talks with people persecuted or imprisoned by the Gestapo or KGB give the book the ring of truth. He is the author of two biographies, Stranger on the Shore and This Life of Grace. John Symons describes the tragedies that struck at the heart of a poor but devoted Cornish family. Humanity and the valour of the human spirit shine from every page.' This England reviewing Stranger on the Shore 'The writer is a consummate artist in style, with a poet's eye for detail. The story is exceptionally vivid ...expressing deep faith and perception of the meaning of life ...' Professor C.F.D. Moule, Cambridge, on Stranger on the Shore. PROMOTION: This book will be reviewed in the local and national press. Ideal for giving GCSE and A level History students a taste of the human impact of the Cold War.

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Tracing the life of the author's father, this title follows him through his childhood in the west of England, his successful 25-year career in the Indian Army prior to the country's independence in 1947, and his final years in Devonshire, where he raised a family while the symptoms of Huntington's disease gradually set in.

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The controversy surrounding the publication of the Zinoviev letter in The Daily Mail in October 1924 has close parallels with events today: Was it leaked by British officials or fake news to influence the outcome of the forthcoming election? On the basis of compelling evidence this book overturns the generally accepted view about the authenticity of the Zinoviev letter, proving it was genuine. The minority Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald had called an election for November. In the last days of the election campaign the press broke the news of a letter purporting to have been sent from Moscow by Grigory Zinoviev, Chairman of the Soviet-controlled Communist International, to the Communist Party of Great Britain. The letter urged members of the Party to increase their efforts to gain power by manipulating the Labour Party, which was hostile to Communist aims, so as to move the Labour Party to a revolutionary position, and by recruiting disenchanted military personnel to form the basis of a British `Red Army'. The Zinoviev letter had reached the Foreign Office via the Secret Service. It caused a storm, with accusations that it was a fabrication by White Russians or by British elements hostile to Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Government, and possibly lost Labour the election. It has never been established whether it was leaked to the Daily Mail by British officials or by someone from the British Communist Party. The author reveals that Zinoviev's letter, sent to British Communists by the Comintern, was not a fabrication, as has been widely believed for almost a hundred years. The evidence to show that this is so has been publicly available since 1930. The book ends with the question, was it overlooked or deliberately concealed by those with an allegiance to the Soviet Union? That is the new and real mystery of the Zinoviev letter.

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In late 2019 the Corona virus emerged and spread quickly around the world. With it went the invisible virus of fear. No one knew how many of those who caught it would die, but the fear of death was in the air. Most of the world was locked down. No public figure asked or tried to answer the questions, at one time so deeply felt: 'Is death the end?' 'Is there an afterlife?' Perhaps they assumed the answers 'Yes' and 'No' respectively but, the author argues, those answers are not to be taken for granted. Unasked questions cause untold psychological trouble. The author tackles these questions in a direct, open way of interest to believers and non-believers alike. In fact he asks 'If you do not believe, do you wish there were an afterlife?' He acknowledges that he feels great sympathy with and respect for those who do not believe in the life of the world to come, and admits that he was once one such. In the book he explains frankly what he now believes and why. He argues that it is the most important question that any of us faces: Are we or are we not created by God to live forever, first in this world and then in His nearer presence in the life of the world to come? It is not a comfortable question to face, but which answer is true?

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This Life of Grace is a history and a biography. It tells the story of Grace Jarrold, the youngest of eight children, who lived for almost ninety years in the village of Plympton in Devon. It also tells the story of the village over the last century, beginning with the Great War of 1914-1918 and school life at that time.

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SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICE!(Valid until 3 months after publication)Daniel Dennett has been one of the central voices in the philosophy of mind for at least the past forty years. Unlike most philosophers of his generation, Dennett's work has resonated far and wide. It has powerfully influenced the development of cognitive science, robotics, developmental psychology, and artificial intelligence. Indeed, his work has led to many new lines of inquiry. For example, he has developed a theory of consciousness which provides an approach to naturalizing mind which circumvents many of the most significant philosophical arguments against the possibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness.The daunting quantity (and variable quality) of literature available on Dennett makes it difficult to discriminate the useful from the tendentious, superficial, and otiose. Moreover, because no comparable philosopher has had a profound impact across such a

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This book tells the story of two people, born in poverty, who found each other and married in a world at war. They brought up and educated a family, but while their two sons were still very young, the father, a strong man who had served for twenty-five years in the army in India, developed the symptoms of Huntington’s disease. This cast a deep shadow over the family as his condition deteriorated over the next twenty-five years, but their faithful experience of God's love and their deep love for each other gave them the strength and sense of purpose that brought them safe to the end, a meaning expressed in the words of Mother Julian of Norwich: “Do you want to know what our Lord meant in all this? Love is his meaning. In this love our life is everlasting. All this we shall see in God without end.” Love is His Meaning recreates in a new way and as one book, as the author always wished, the story first presented in Stranger on the Shore and This Life of Grace, both of which captivated readers. This new book has allowed the author to draw together the separate stories of his parents and of their families, before they were married, the story of their marriage and of his mother's long life after his father's death. This treatment, of parallel lives, gives a picture of life in our country over the whole of the twentieth century, allowing the reader to grasp what life was like for many ordinary families in those days when the power of the Christian Faith was more influential and widely experienced.

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