Cole Moreton – författare

There has been a revolution. The God who ruled over us for five hundred years has been overthrown. The soul of England has been transformed, almost without anybody noticing. Gone are the shared values and confidence of a nation that seemed so sure of itself and what it believed in, even as recently as the wedding of Charles and Diana, our last great festival of certainty. Since then the number of people who go to church on Sunday has halved. More of us go to IKEA. Millions still believe in God but never want to go near a pew again. Why have we turned away, and what does it mean? Moreton uncovers the battles, blunders, sex scandals and financial disasters that caused the long predicted death of the established Church. But this extraordinary story is about all of us, not just the Christians. Can a new national identity emerge, now that we have a thousand gods instead of just one? Moreton says yes and reveals how a constantly evolving but uniquely English spirituality remains at the heart of who we are.

''Clive James raged against the dying of the light, as you would expect from a man who had punched out prose like a prizefighter all his life; yet he also showed grace and gratitude at being allowed to stay in that light for a little while longer. He saw beauty in even the smallest things. Every moment was potentially precious, because there were so few left. As his daughter Claerwen said, for him "Everything was Extraordinary."''What if we could learn to live with such awareness long before the end? To appreciate every moment, and every encounter with another human or with the natural world around us? Might we, too, learn that everything is extraordinary? That we are interconnected and interdependent? Each encounter we have with another person is potentially meaningful because our very humanity depends on being connected with others. As Desmond Tutu says: ''I couldn''t be a human being on my lonesome, I wouldn''t know what to do.''In a set of lyrical meditations, award-winning writer and interviewer Cole Moreton takes us face-to-face with the famous, the infamous -- and others with insights to share -- from Scarlett Johansson, Tiger Woods and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to Zahra, a refugee who crossed the Channel on a tiny, overladen rubber boat. We meet all of them as equals and each fascinating story tells us something about the way we live, love and reach out to find each other, whoever we are.Everything Is Extraordinary builds into a mesmerising and lyrical meditation on the joy of being alive and open to the world. All we need to do is pay attention.