John Cornwell – författare

One of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent years, the acclaimed writer John Cornwell has finally written his own story, and the story of a choice he had to make between the Church and a life lived outside its confines.John Cornwell decided to become a priest at the age of thirteen, a strange choice perhaps for a boy who'd been sent to a 'convalescent home' for having whacked a nun about the head. Growing up in a chaotic household, sharing two rooms with his brothers and sisters, his hot-headed mother and – when he was around – absconding father, John spent his time roaming the war-torn streets of London looking for trouble. One day, at his mother's suggestion, he responded to a call from his local parish priest for altar servers. The 'dance of the rituals', the murmur of Latin and the candlelit dawn took hold of his imagination and provided him with a new and unexpected comfort.He left post-war London for Cotton, a seminary in the West Midlands. In this hidden, all-male world, with its rhythms of devotion and prayer, John grew up caught between his religious feelings and the rough and tumble of his life back in London; between seeking the face of God in the wild countryside around him and experiencing his first kiss; between monitoring his soul and watching a girl from a moving train whose face he will never forget.Cornwell tells us of a world now vanished: of the colourful community of priests in charge; of the boys and their intense and sometimes passionate friendships; of the hovering threat of abuse in this cloistered environment. And he tells us of his struggle to come to terms with a shameful secret from his London childhood – a vicious sexual attack which haunts his time at Cotton.A book of tremendous warmth and humour, ‘Seminary Boy’ is about an adolescent's search for a father and for a home.

One of the most extraordinary memoirs of recent years, the acclaimed writer John Cornwell has finally written his own story, and the story of a choice he had to make between the Church and a life lived outside its confines.John Cornwell decided to become a priest at the age of thirteen, a strange choice perhaps for a boy who'd been sent to a 'convalescent home' for having whacked a nun about the head. Growing up in a chaotic household, sharing two rooms with his brothers and sisters, his hot-headed mother and – when he was around – absconding father, John spent his time roaming the war-torn streets of London looking for trouble. One day, at his mother's suggestion, he responded to a call from his local parish priest for altar servers. The 'dance of the rituals', the murmur of Latin and the candlelit dawn took hold of his imagination and provided him with a new and unexpected comfort.He left post-war London for Cotton, a seminary in the West Midlands. In this hidden, all-male world, with its rhythms of devotion and prayer, John grew up caught between his religious feelings and the rough and tumble of his life back in London; between seeking the face of God in the wild countryside around him and experiencing his first kiss; between monitoring his soul and watching a girl from a moving train whose face he will never forget.Cornwell tells us of a world now vanished: of the colourful community of priests in charge; of the boys and their intense and sometimes passionate friendships; of the hovering threat of abuse in this cloistered environment. And he tells us of his struggle to come to terms with a shameful secret from his London childhood – a vicious sexual attack which haunts his time at Cotton.A book of tremendous warmth and humour, `Seminary Boy’ is about an adolescent's search for a father and for a home.

Backed by a wealth of new research, John Cornwell tells for the first time the story of the World War II career of Eugenio Pacelli, the man who was Pope Pius XII, arguably the most dangerous churchman in modern history. In the first decade of the century, as a brilliant young Vatican lawyer, Pacelli helped shape a new ideology of unprecedented papal power in Germany. In 1933 Hitler became his negotiating partner, an agreement was arranged that granted religious and financial payments to the Catholic Church in exchange for their withdrawal from social and political privillage, ensuring the rise of Nazism.

The Late John Paul II was portrayed by admirers as one of history's great popes. But in The Pope in Winter, leading Vatican expert John Cornwell seriously questions the workings of his papacy and points to fundamental flaws - exacerbated by age and infirmity - that have alarming consequences for both the Catholic Church's future and John Paul II's successor.

Our lives, states of health, relationships, behaviour, experiences of the natural world, and the technologies that shape our contemporary existence are subject to a superfluity of competing, multi-faceted and sometimes incompatible explanations. Widespread confusion about the nature of ''explanation'' and its scope and limits pervades popular exposition of the natural sciences, popular history and philosophy of science. This fascinating and intriguing book explores the way explanations work, why they vary between disciplines, periods, and cultures, and whether they have any necessary boundaries. In other words, Explanations aims to achieve a better understanding of explanation, both within the sciences and the humanities. It features contributions from expert writers from a wide range of disciplines, including science, philosophy, mathematics, and social anthropology.

Our lives, states of health, relationships, behaviour, experiences of the natural world, and the technologies that shape our contemporary existence are subject to a superfluity of competing, multi-faceted and sometimes incompatible explanations. Widespread confusion about the nature of ''explanation'' and its scope and limits pervades popular exposition of the natural sciences, popular history and philosophy of science. This fascinating and intriguing book explores the way explanations work, why they vary between disciplines, periods, and cultures, and whether they have any necessary boundaries. In other words, Explanations aims to achieve a better understanding of explanation, both within the sciences and the humanities. It features contributions from expert writers from a wide range of disciplines, including science, philosophy, mathematics, and social anthropology.

Our lives, states of health, relationships, behaviour, experiences of the natural world, and the technologies that shape our contemporary existence are subject to a superfluity of competing, multi-faceted and sometimes incompatible explanations. Widespread confusion about the nature of 'explanation' and its scope and limits pervades popular exposition of the natural sciences, popular history and philosophy of science. This fascinating and intriguing book explores the way explanations work, why they vary between disciplines, periods, and cultures, and whether they have any necessary boundaries. In other words, Explanations aims to achieve a better understanding of explanation, both within the sciences and the humanities. It features contributions from expert writers from a wide range of disciplines, including science, philosophy, mathematics, and social anthropology.

In a rich and fascinating history John Cornwell tells the epic story of Germany's scientists from the First World War to the collapse of Hitler's Reich. He shows how Germany became the world's Mecca for inventive genius, taking the lion's share of Nobel awards, before Hitler's regime hijacked science for wars of conquest and genocidal racism. Cornwell gives a dramatic account of the wide ranging Nazi research projects, from rockets to nuclear weapons; the pursuit of advanced technology for irrational ends, concluding with with penetrating relevance for today: the inherent dangers of science without conscience.

John Henry Newman was the most eminent English-speaking Christian thinker and writer of the past two hundred years. James Joyce hailed him the ''greatest'' prose stylist of the Victorian age.A problematic campaign to canonise Newman started fifty years ago. After many delays John Paul II declared him a ''Venerable''. Then Pope Benedict XVI, a keen student of Newman''s works, pressed for his beatification. Finally, in 2019 and after authentication of the second of two miracles attributed to Newman, he was canonised (made a saint) at a ceremony in Rome given by Pope Francis and attended by HRH Prince Charles.In Newman''s Unquiet Grave John Cornwell (author of A Thief in the Night and Hitler''s Pope) tells the story of the chequered attempts to establish Newman''s sanctity against the background of major developments within Catholicism. His life was marked by personal feuds, self-absorption, accusations of professional and artistic narcissism, hypochondria, and same-sex friendships that at times bordered on the apparent homo-erotic.John Cornwell investigates the process of Newman''s elevation to sainthood to present a highly original and controversial new portrait of the great man''s life and genius for a new generation of religious and non-religious readers alike.

John Henry Newman was the most eminent English-speaking Christian thinker and writer of the past two hundred years. James Joyce hailed him the 'greatest' prose stylist of the Victorian age.A problematic campaign to canonise Newman started fifty years ago. After many delays John Paul II declared him a 'Venerable'. Then Pope Benedict XVI, a keen student of Newman's works, pressed for his beatification. But was Newman a 'Saint'?In Newman's Unquiet Grave John Cornwell (author of A Thief in the Night and Hitler's Pope) tells the story of the chequered attempts to establish Newman's sanctity against the background of major developments within Catholicism. His life was marked by personal feuds, self-absorption, accusations of professional and artistic narcissism, hypochondria, and same-sex friendships that at times bordered on the apparent homo-erotic.John Cornwell investigates the process of Newman's elevation to sainthood to present a highly original and controversial new portrait of the great man's life and genius for a new generation of religious and non-religious readers alike.

Public interest in religious debate in the UK and USA has recently been fed by a series of books of popular polemic against theism, religion and the discipline of theology itself. A small industry has grown up around these works-by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and others-but many have complained not just of their theological illiteracy but also of their tendency to conflate religious belief with fundamentalism. They have contributed to a public atmosphere of anti-pluralist hostility to the expression of "faith positions." The atmosphere in Britain of aggressive secularism contrasts sharply with a public culture in the USA of religious conservatism that is suspicious of secular humanism. Here, a series of philosophers reflect, in an exploratory and confessional spirit, upon the status and sources of their religion or other spiritual sympathies-this may come in the form of a commitment to faith, an openness to religion, or another experience of transcendence. The authors get down to the essentials of religious agnosticism, the limits of secular humanism, the idea of conversion, the nature of despair, and the possibility of moral objectivity.

This is the story of two British men from very different social backgrounds, who both joined a new Pals battalion during World War I.To encourage men to volunteer, the British Army established Pals battalions that allowed men who enlisted together to serve together during the First World War. One of these men was Vivian Simpson, a 31-year-old solicitor who was well known in the city; partly because he was an outstanding footballer, playing for Sheffield Wednesday and an England trialist. Simpson was the very first man to enroll for the new battalion and was commissioned in January 1915.The other man was Reg Glenn, a clerk in the Education Offices who served as a signaler in each battle the 12th Battalion fought in until the summer of 1917, when he was selected to become an officer.To his annoyance, Vivian Simpson was kept back in England as a training officer until after the battalion’s disaster on the Somme on 1 July 1916. However, after that he became a most energetic and courageous officer. He was awarded an MC in 1917, but was killed in the German offensive on the Lys in April 1918.Reg Glenn went back to France in 1918 as a subaltern in the North Staffordshires and was wounded on the Aisne in his first day of combat as an officer. He was never fit enough to go back to the trenches and became a training officer in Northumberland with his new regiment and later with the Cameronians at Invergordon. He survived the war and lived to be 101 years old, making him the last survivor of the 12th Battalion.

This is the story of two British men from very different social backgrounds, who both joined a new Pals battalion during World War I. To encourage men to volunteer, the British Army established Pals battalions that allowed men who enlisted together to serve together during the First World War. One of these men was Vivian Simpson, a 31-year-old solicitor who was well known in the city; partly because he was an outstanding footballer, playing for Sheffield Wednesday and an England trialist. Simpson was the very first man to enroll for the new battalion and was commissioned in January 1915. The other man was Reg Glenn, a clerk in the Education Offices who served as a signaler in each battle the 12th Battalion fought in until the summer of 1917, when he was selected to become an officer. To his annoyance, Vivian Simpson was kept back in England as a training officer until after the battalion's disaster on the Somme on 1 July 1916. However, after that he became a most energetic and courageous officer. He was awarded an MC in 1917, but was killed in the German offensive on the Lys in April 1918. Reg Glenn went back to France in 1918 as a subaltern in the North Staffordshires and was wounded on the Aisne in his first day of combat as an officer. He was never fit enough to go back to the trenches and became a training officer in Northumberland with his new regiment and later with the Cameronians at Invergordon. He survived the war and lived to be 101 years old, making him the last survivor of the 12th Battalion.

On Tuesday morning, 23rd September 1975, the corpses of three unmarried siblings, last surviving members of the ancient Luxton clan of Winkleigh, North Devon, were found on their remote farm. All three had had their heads blown off. Robbie's cheeks and neck had been stabbed; Frances had a broken leg. Strangely, each of the four doors to the house had been locked from the inside.The Luxtons' idyllic farm on a stretch of lush countryside between Exmoor and Dartmoor had been lovingly tended with outdated methods. There were rumours of a thwarted betrothal, wrangles over money and property, generational feuds in the extended family, bouts of insanity and extreme miserliness.John Cornwell's classic investigation into the violent deaths of these unhappy siblings told a story of a farming family struggling under unbearable practical and emotional pressures, their violent deaths, the police investigation and the proceedings of the inquest. The official verdict was that there had been a suicide pact, but Cornwell decided to revisit the evidence forty years after Earth to Earth was first published, and he finds that there were anomalies in the evidence suggesting alternative, criminal scenarios, and the misery that preceded these savage deaths suggested even darker elements.Were the Luxtons scapegoats of local malice, or victims of a murderous family conflict, stricken by a dire ancestral curse?This new edition of a true crime classic includes a postscript in which the author describes the extraordinary lengths that the great poet Ted Hughes, a neighbour of the Luxtons, went to try and suppress publication of the book.

A STRONG WORDS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025'CHILLING AND THRILLING' JOHN BANVILLE'IRRESISTIBLE STORYTELLING' THE TIMESOn Tuesday morning, 23rd September 1975, the corpses of three unmarried siblings, last surviving members of the ancient Luxton clan of Winkleigh, North Devon, were found on their remote farm. All three had had their heads blown off. Robbie's cheeks and neck had been stabbed; Frances had a broken leg. Strangely, each of the four doors to the house had been locked from the inside.The Luxtons' idyllic farm on a stretch of lush countryside between Exmoor and Dartmoor had been lovingly tended with outdated methods. There were rumours of a thwarted betrothal, wrangles over money and property, generational feuds in the extended family, bouts of insanity and extreme miserliness.John Cornwell's classic investigation into the violent deaths of these unhappy siblings told a story of a farming family struggling under unbearable practical and emotional pressures, their violent deaths, the police investigation and the proceedings of the inquest. The official verdict was that there had been a suicide pact, but Cornwell decided to revisit the evidence forty years after Earth to Earth was first published, and he finds that there were anomalies in the evidence suggesting alternative, criminal scenarios, and the misery that preceded these savage deaths suggested even darker elements.Were the Luxtons scapegoats of local malice, or victims of a murderous family conflict, stricken by a dire ancestral curse?This new edition of a true crime classic includes a postscript in which the author describes the extraordinary lengths that the great poet Ted Hughes, a neighbour of the Luxtons, went to try and suppress publication of the book.

Would you tell your deepest secrets to a relative stranger? And if you did, would you feel vulnerable? Cleansed? Or perhaps even worse than you did before? Confession has always performed a complex role in society, always created mixed feelings in its practitioners. As an acknowledgement of sinfulness, it can provide immense psychological relief; but while aiming to replace remorse with innocence, its history has become inextricably intertwined with eroticism and shame.The Dark Box is an erudite and personal history; Cornwell draws on his own memories of Catholic boyhood, and weaves it with the story of confession from its origins in the early church to the current day, where its enduring psychological potency is evidenced by everything from the Vatican''s ''confession app'' to Oprah Winfrey''s talk shows. Since the 16th century, seclusion of two individuals in the intimate ''dark box'', often discussing sexual actions and thoughts, has eroticised the experience of confession. When, in 1905, Pius X made confession a weekly, rather than yearly ritual, the horrific cases of child abuse which have haunted the Catholic church in the twentieth century became possible.John Cornwell''s impassioned treatise on the dangers of confession is now available in paperback.