'Life is beautiful . . . and baffling. Any new day may be lit up with beauty and wonder but the next overcast with pain and sadness.
Our time on earth is shot through with questions so vast that we can’t get our minds around them. Humans have always tried to find ways to respond to those questions. It’s usually called ‘wisdom’, and before writing was thought up, it was handed down in stories.
Some of this was bottled in religion and became congealed into creeds and regulations. That’s all right for some, but many of us don’t want to be told what to believe, we’re shy of certainty, suspicious of authority.
We still live with the questions though. Like how the big moments – the birth of a child or the death of a friend – can leave us wondering about how to live in the small moments.
That’s what this book is about. A collection of fieldnotes on how we can live this life, and live it well.
From poets and songwriters, activists and artists, from people with faith, and people without. We’ve nicked their best ideas and added some of our own. Clues and pointers, rather than terms and conditions.'
Martin Wroe studied theology before becoming a staff writer on The Independent and the Observer. He won a Sony Gold Radio Award for the Radio 1 series The Big Holy One, and co-authored, with Malcolm Doney, The Rough Guide to a Better World. The author of several poetry books that no-one has noticed, he also produces collections of stories about people in the north London community where he lives. He is a volunteer vicar in his local parish and a contributor to Thought for the Day on Radio 4. He keeps chickens.
Malcolm Doney trained as a fine artist at what Jarvis Cocker called St Martin’s College - now Central Saint Martin’s UAL - before pursuing a writing career in journalism, advertising and broadcasting. He has written ten books, including, with his wife Meryl, Who Made Me? , a sex guide for seven-year-olds. He is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought, and Radio 4’s Something Understood. He lives in the village of Blythburgh, Suffolk, where he is a volunteer priest in the parish church, sometimes joined by his horse, Neville.
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Harry Baker - Paper People.
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