Afterlife

'As is true of all his previous books, Philip Almond's Afterlife is thoughtful, perceptive, inquiring, accurate, wide-ranging, clear and engagingly written. It is a fine follow-up to his earlier biography of the Devil.' - Jeffrey Burton Russell, Emeritus Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of A History of Heaven and Paradise Mislaid; 'Philip Almond's cultural history of the afterlife is a fascinating - and frequently disturbing - journey through the Western imagination: its dreams, desires, fears and hopes. Erudite, lucid, ranging the while from Plato to Madame Blavatsky and from Dante's portrayals of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise to Hal Lindsey's apocalyptic scenarios, the book draws us into an exhilarating current of eschatologies and final things that challenge any secular ideology because of their abiding relevance. Staring at death and finitude, humankind aspires to and tries to picture post-mortem conditions: a perennial occupation that cannot be erased. It is who we are. In his engaging book Almond offers us a roadmap to self-understanding.' - Graham Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Oxford; 'Philip Almond's new book is a welcome and readable reminder that belief in life after death is not one simple set of convictions but a range of hopes and conceptions, including both the sophisticated and the simple, engaging in diverse ways with diverse models of what human life essentially is.' - Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and former Archbishop of Canterbury