In the beginning, there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the Carpet...

That's the old story everyone knows & loves

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Cartoons have the astonishing power to encapsulate a historical moment or popular mood, & this magnificent new survey tells the story of modern Britain through hundreds of the finest examples. Year by year, from the death of Queen Victoria to the downfall of Saddam Hussein, it shows the views taken by the nation's leading cartoonists of the issues & personalities that dominated the news ...

Cartoons have the astonishing power to encapsulate a historical moment or popular mood, & this magnificent new survey tells the story of modern Britain through hundreds of the finest examples.

Year by year, from the death of Queen Victoria to the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, it shows the views taken by the nation's leading cartoonists of the issues & personalities that dominated the news

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* The enormous popularity of books by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris & others shows that despite the religious revival that is under way in many parts of the world, there is widespread confusion about the nature of religious truth. For the first time in history, a significantly large number of people want nothing to do with God. In the past people went to great lengths to experience a sacred reality that they called God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao; indeed religion could be said to be the distinguishing characteristic of homo sapiens. But now militant atheists preach a gospel of godlessness with the zeal of Christian missionaries in the age of faith & find an eager audience. What has happened?

* Karen Armstrong argues that historically atheism has rarely been a denial of the sacred itself but has nearly always rejected a particular conception of God. During the modern period, the Christians of the West developed a theology that was radically different from that of the pre-modern age. Tracing the history of faith from the Palaeolithic Age to the present, Armstrong shows that until recently there was no warfare between science & religion. But science has changed the conversation. The meaning of words such as belief, faith, & mystery has been entirely altered, so that atheists & theists alike now think & speak about God
- &, indeed, reason itself
- in a way that our ancestors would have found astonishing.

* Why has the modern God become incredible? Has God a future in this age of aggressive scientific rationalism? Karen Armstrong suggests that if we draw creatively on the insights of the past, we can build a faith that speaks to the needs of our troubled & dangerously polarized world.





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There is widespread confusion about the nature of religious truth. For the first time in history, a significantly large number of people want nothing to do with God. Mlitant atheists preach a gospel of godlessness with the zeal of missionaries & find an eager audience. What has happened?

Tracing the history of faith from the Palaeolithic Age to the present, Karen Armstrong shows that meaning of words such as 'belief', 'faith', & 'mystery' has been entirely altered, so that atheists & theists alike now think & speak about God
- &, indeed, reason itself
- in a way that our ancestors would have found astonishing.

Does God have a future? Karen Armstrong examines how we can build a faith that speaks to the needs of our troubled & dangerously polarized world.





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Albert Campion is summoned to the village of Kepesake to investigate a particularly distasteful death. The body turns out to be that of Pig Peters, freshly killed five months after his own funeral. Soon other corpses start to turn up, just as Peters's body goes missing. It takes all Campion's coolly incisive powers of detection to unravel the crime. ...