The Insights of Solitude

Hermits

A history of hermits from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks to the present day

This wonderful book is many things by turn: history, biography, philosophy, theology and even a spiritual textbook. With deft and approachable analysis, France lays out a cosmology of the eremetic impulse...The author's wit, discernment and sweet reason for spellbinding.

Hermits is informative in a variety of ways and it is clearly and enagingly written, with a wealth of anecdote to leaven the spirtitual insights and the psychology of conversion.

This is a fine study of some outstanding hermits and a treasury of the wisdom which they bequeathed to posterity.

Vividly written and highly accessible, it abounds in insights both spiritual and psychological.

Peter France spent the first 15 years of his working life as a civil servant in the Fiji Islands. After a spell as an academic, he joined the BBC, first in radio where he launched and presented Kaleidoscope, and later in television, where he wrote and presented programmes such as Everyman and Timewatch. His most recent books are The Rape of Egypt and Greek as a Treat. He lives in Devon but spends much of his time on the Greek island of Patmos.

Ours is an age where solitude tends to be discussed in the context of the 'problem of loneliness'. However in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfillment outside society has been admired and seen as a measure of discernment and inner security. In this lucid and highly readable book, Peter France shows how hermits, from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks to the present day, have something vitally important to say to a society that fears solitude.

Peter France

A Spiritual Odyssey

Peter France looks at the various stages of his own spiritual odyssey and talks intimately of his long search for knowledge and enlightenment. Warm, lucid, humorous, Journey is grounded in France's own life and experience. He takes us from the beginning of his journey in a small Methodist chapel in Yorkshire, and his first perception of Christianity, through Oxford where he rejected Christianity and became a humanist and a career as a colonial administrative officer in Fiji, to his later position as an investigative reporter for BBC religious television. Finally-and movingly-he writes about his conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church, and describes his baptism at the age of 57 on the Greek island of Patmos by total immersion in a 44 gallon oil drum of lukewarm water. Illuminated by personal anecdote and information by a broad knowledge of different religions and religious experiences, Journey is both immensely engaging, and studded with powerful spiritual insight.

Peter France

Books by Peter France

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