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Leaving Alexandria
A Memoir of Faith and Doubt
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Leaving Alexandria
Narrated by:
Richard Holloway
Buy Now for ₹650.61
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Narrated by:
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Richard Holloway
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Written by:
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Richard Holloway
About this listen
Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize 2013.
The acclaimed writer, respected thinker and outspoken former bishop Richard Holloway recounts a life defined by the biggest questions: Who am I? And what is God?
At fourteen, Richard Holloway left his home in the Vale of Leven, north of Glasgow, and travelled hundreds of miles to be educated and trained for the priesthood by a religious order in an English monastery. By twenty-five he had been ordained and was working in the slums of Glasgow. Throughout the following forty years, Richard touched the lives of many people in the Church and in the wider community. But behind his confident public face lay a restless, unquiet heart and a constantly searching mind.
In his long-awaited memoir, Richard seeks to explain how, after many crises of faith, he finally and painfully left the Church. It is a wise, poetic and fiercely honest book.
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Critic Reviews
"At a time when the world has urgently needed wise and compassionate leadership, this poignant memoir, written with the integrity, intelligence and wit that we expect from Richard Holloway, lays bare the ludicrous and entirely unnecessary mess we have made of religion"
"Leaving Alexandria is many things. It is a compelling account of a journey through life, told with great frankness; it is a subtle reflection on what it means to live in an imperfect and puzzling world; and it is a highly readable insight into one of the most humane and engaged minds of our times. It is, quite simply, a wonderful book" (Alexander McCall Smith)
"Richard Holloway's memoir is endlessly vivid and fascinating. It's the record of a mind too large, too curious and far too generous to be confined within any single religious denomination. His account of how a passionate, intelligent boy grew out of a poor and deprived background without ever losing touch with the humane values it gave him, will be a delight and inspiration to believers, non-believers, and ex-believers alike" (Philip Pullman)
"An enlightening walk through a life that encompasses West Africa, the Gorbals, rent strikes, the divided self and the question of grace" (Mark Cousins)
"Exceptional...it is rare to find someone in whom intellectual and emotional intelligence combine so movingly" (Maggie Ferguson)
"Nobody could fail to be intensely moved by the final chapters of his memoir . . . a deeply lovable man; and what a wonderful book he has written" (Mary Warnock)
"Leaving Alexandria gives a profound sense of the benefits, as well as the difficulties, that accrue from taking a zigzag path through life . . . it summarises an argument that a lot of people will find sympathetic, as well as compelling" (Andrew Motion)
"Captures the bewildering range of churches within the Church . . . Holloway certainly throws down the gauntlet - with a quiet, elegiac passion - to Christians who arm themselves in certainty . . . They should read this wide, erudite book as a matter of urgency" (David Robson)
"This book offers quite unique insights into a troubled, contemporary religious mind. It also reminds us that, in Richard Holloway, Episcopal Edinburgh may have lost a thoughtful bishop but Scotland gained a unique social critic and commentator" (Alex Wood)
"This is a portrait of a formerly devoted Christian who, by confessing his faults and doubts to us, becomes exemplary, an Everyman, and a guide to how we too might lose faith without sacrificing our souls" (Alain de Botton)
"This is a deeply moving and disturbing biography. Holloway, is a confident author, assured when recreating both the past and the feelings that moments evoked...A writer capable of considerable brilliance, an intellectual who can provoke thought, a genuinely good man trying to be better"
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