Body And Spirit in the Secular Age

Lourdes

Controversy, history and myth: Lourdes takes a clear and incredibly well researched look at the place of miracles, healing ... and the most hotels outside Paris

Ruth Harris is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at New College, Oxford.

Lourdes was at the very centre of nineteenth century debates on religion, science and medicine.   Both the Church and secularists championed the 'miracle' town as crucial in shaping how society should think about the mind, body and spirit.  Since the &lsquo;visions&rsquo; of Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 transformed the quiet Pyrenean town into an international tourist and pilgrimage destination, it has been a site for controversy.  In her well-crafted and carefully researched book, Harris deftly places Lourdes and its attendant spiritual movement firmly at the centre of French history and shows its significance in the country&rsquo;s development.

Ruth Harris

Winner of the WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2010 and 2010 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY

An extraordinary study of the affair as a tragic drama that swept up a man, his family and friends, and more widely French society and the French state.

Ruth Harris offers us one of the most thorough and eloquent accounts of this turbulent episode.

With the aid of copious illustrations, helpful chronology and a list of leading characters, [Harris] offers a compelling account of incidents

Ruth Harris' minutely detailed examination of the rich mulch from which the Dreyfus case sprouted its fleurs du mal, adds a new level of learning to the affair that defined 20th-century France

a highly imaginative, deeply-researched inquiry into the battle over Dreyfus which revels in paradox and complexity.

"Harris is a first-rate narrative historian... What marks Harris's contribution is her formidable research skills, her exceptionally wide general and historical reading, and her always interesting eye for the revealing anecdote or pen portrait."

"Scrupulous and well-written...  Harris is to be thanked for the care and measure of her sifting and weighing, and for the deep historical perspective that she brings to the undertaking."

Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2010 and the 2010 National Jewish Book Award for Biography 
 
Ruth Harris writes beautifully and engagingly on a moment in French history that polarized society and undermined the French state; the repercussions of which were felt up to the outbreak of the Second World War. 
 
At the end of September 1894 a charlady stole an undated and unsigned letter from the wastepaper bin of the German military attaché in Paris. Torn to pieces but stuck back together by French intelligence, this document contained French military secrets. By the middle of October a Jewish captain in the army called Alfred Dreyfus was accused of being its author. As it turned out, he was entirely innocent, but at the time few questioned the verdict of the subsequent court martial, nor the unanimous decision to sentence him to a life of penal servitude. Public opinion was outraged, and the War Minister, General Auguste Mercier, asked for the reintroduction of the death penalty so Dreyfus could be guillotined. Although the request was turned down, Dreyfus was still subjected to special conditions: rather than going to New Caledonia like other transported convicts, he was sent to the much harsher Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana, and condemned to solitary confinement in murderous conditions. The French authorities did not expect - and probably did not want - him to survive. 
 
So undisputed was Dreyfus' conviction that no one had any inkling it would be queried, let alone that the case would become the scandal that nearly brought down the French state. It changed the political course of the nation and transformed the way the country viewed itself and was viewed by others.

Ruth Harris

Praise for The Man on Devil's Island

Winner of the WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2010 and 2010 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY

An extraordinary study of the affair as a tragic drama that swept up a man, his family and friends, and more widely French society and the French state.

A triumph of research and analysis.

Winner of the WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2010 and 2010 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY

An extraordinary study of the affair as a tragic drama that swept up a man, his family and friends, and more widely French society and the French state.

A triumph of research and analysis.

Winner of the WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2010 and 2010 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY

An extraordinary study of the affair as a tragic drama that swept up a man, his family and friends, and more widely French society and the French state.

A triumph of research and analysis.

Books by Ruth Harris

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