Alison Morgan – författare

A major study of the Divine Comedy, this book offers an interesting perspective on Dante's representation of the afterlife. Alison Morgan departs from the conventional critical emphasis on Dante's place in relation to learned traditions by undertaking a thorough examination of the poem in the context of popular beliefs. Her principal sources are thus not the highly literary texts (such as Virgil's Aeneid or Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae) which have become a familiar context for the poem, but rather visions of the Other World found in popular writings, painting and sculpture from the centuries leading up to its composition. The book will be of interest to non-specialists in addition to scholars of Dante, since it offers a clear preliminary account of the Other World tradition, a chronology of its principal representations and summaries of the major texts. Fully illustrated throughout, it integrates with the literary and theological aspects of Dante's heritage the important but often neglected dimension of art history.

The average age of churchgoers in Britain is now 47. Almost every denomination is experiencing steady decline. How sure can we be that we are still offering something people want to hear? Alison Morgan identifies four clear reasons to be confident: 1. The gospel still speaks to confused teens and weary sceptics. By embracing doubts and welcoming questions it remains open to us to present something which answers people's real needs. 2. The word of truth and the Spirit of power still exercise authority and compel attention. Alison's own experience of ministry in the UK and abroad provides illustrations. 3. Spiritual gifts, given not to excite individuals but in order to renew the church for its core task of mission, are powerfully present and widely recognised and practised. 4. In a time of rapid cultural change, new expressions of church are constantly emerging: this is necessary to guard against vital spirituality sliding into drab religion.

When Katy Simmons packed all three of her daughters off to their grandmother''s house for a few days during their school summer holidays in order to get some work done in peace and quiet, she expected to talk to them on the phone, she knew that her eldest would send her a text now and again, she was even thinking about getting granny to set up Skype - but she never expected them each to send her a letter. She realised that Granny was responsible. Letters are such old-fashioned things, after all ... or are they? Talking to her friends, she soon realised that writing to Mum wasn''t such a rare occurrence for other kids who were away from home. Some were encouraged to do so at school and others even liked to leave notes around the house for their mothers to find. Of course, when embarking on the huge task of writing a letter, you don''t waste too much time on trivia. Letters are for important stuff - and it''s what the children who wrote the letters that are featured in this book found important that make them so fascinating to read.

Ballads and songs of Peterloo is an edited collection of poems and songs written following the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. This collection, which includes over seventy poems, were published either as broadsides or in radical periodicals and newspapers. Notes to support the reading of the texts are provided, but they also stand alone, conveying the original publications without diluting their authenticity.Following an introduction outlining the massacre, the radical press and broadside ballad, the poems are grouped into six sections according to theme. Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy is included as an appendix in acknowledgement of its continuing significance to the representation of Peterloo. This book is primarily aimed at students and lecturers of Romanticism and social history.

Ballads and songs of Peterloo is an edited collection of poems and songs written following the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. This collection, which includes over seventy poems, were published either as broadsides or in radical periodicals and newspapers. Notes to support the reading of the texts are provided, but they also stand alone, conveying the original publications without diluting their authenticity.Following an introduction outlining the massacre, the radical press and broadside ballad, the poems are grouped into six sections according to theme. Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy is included as an appendix in acknowledgement of its continuing significance to the representation of Peterloo. This book is primarily aimed at students and lecturers of Romanticism and social history.

There are no simple answers to life’s challenges, so how do we integrate our most testing experiences into our faith in a way which strengthens rather than weakens it?When we are at our weakest, when we feel we most need God and yet have no idea how to talk to him, it is the Psalms which leap to our rescue. With the psalmists as our guides, we learn to draw closer to God, to hear his voice in fresh ways, and to identify what it is that troubles us. Borrowing their words, we find that we are able to articulate our most painful feelings and walk through suffering with honesty, hope, and confidence in the God who travels beside us. Here is an opportunity to read the Psalms differently: an invitation to embark on a new journey.

A prophetic challenge to the Western church. The Christian faith is always subversive to the dominant world view. Jesus overturned every assumption which stopped people experiencing the living reality of God - the heart of truth. Sadly, the Western world has reduced "truth" to the merely rational, and then discarded it as inadequate. In Africa, and other parts of the world where God's truth has never been straitjacketed in this way, the church is characterised by a joy now absent in the West. Western culture has limited what we can believe and receive. Can we: Burst free from this restrictive secular framework? Learn not only to know truth, but to feel it, and live it? Live our faith in such a way that it becomes real to those around us? Alison Morgan shows that Jesus lived free from the culturally imposed norms which restrict our understanding of truth. Examining church history, prophecy past and present, the state of our culture and of the church today, and drawing on personal experience and the experience of others, Alison blends analysis and imagination, history and poetry in this prophetic challenge to Western Christians.