Leaving Alexandria

Product Description

In one of the most remarkable memoirs of recent years the acclaimed writer respected thinker & outspoken former bishop Richard Holloway takes us back through a life defined by the biggest questions: Who am I? & what is God? At the tender age of fourteen Richard Holloway left his home in the Vale of Leven north of Glasgow & travelled hundreds of miles to be educated & trained for the priesthood by a religious order in an English monastery. It was an intense cloistered education for an impressionable young man. By twenty-five he had been ordained & was working in the slums of Glasgow. Throughout the forty years that followed Richard touched the lives of many people in the Church & in the wider community. But behind his confident public face lay a restless unquiet heart & a constantly searching mind. How can anyone claim a complete understanding of the mystery of existence? Why is the Church which claims to be the instrument of Gods love so prone to cruelty & condemnation? & how can a man live with the tension between public faith & private doubt? In his long-awaited memoir Richard seeks to answer these questions & to explain how after many crises of faith he finally & painfully left the Church. It is a wise poetic & fiercely honest book. As a portrait of an inner life plagued by doubt it is unsurpassed.