Böcker av Terry Tastard

Infectious disease, wounded and dying soldiers, and a shortage of supplies were the daily realities faced by the nuns who nursed with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War. This study documents their involvement in the conflict and how the nuns bore witness to the effects of carnage and official indifference, in many cases traumatized as a result. This book reflects on the initiative and courage shown by the nuns and how their actions can be viewed as part of a wider movement among women in the mid-19th century to find fulfilment and assert control in their own lives. Nightingale's Nuns and the Crimean War also sheds light on how critics at the time accused many of the nuns of being secret agents of the Catholic Church who preyed on vulnerable soldier patients; there was a campaign in parliament to regulate and control convents. Terry Tastard shows how the nuns attempted to neutralize this anti-Catholicism, as well as charting the participation of Anglican nuns who had just begun an astonishing project to revive the religious life in the Church of England. Finally the book reveals new insights into Florence Nightingale's relationships with the nuns who nursed with her in Crimea and how these experiences impacted Nightingale's own perspective.

Ronald Knox was hailed as one of the brightest minds of the Edwardian era, and his decision to become a Catholic shocked many of his contemporaries. He was to be one of the most outstanding recruits to the Church of his generation, and for thirty years he was one of the best known personalities of English Catholicism. A gifted writer and broadcaster, Knox raised the self-confidence of the Catholic Church and showed how Catholicism was now once more at home in England. Knox's writing, broadcasting and preaching made a profound impact on his fellow Catholics and his lucid expositions of Christian teaching found a wide audience. Educated at Eton and Balliol, he demonstrated, as Newman had before him, that an Englishman of his background could be at ease in the Catholic Church. The Church was able to make full use of his talents, as teacher and priest, and as Catholic chaplain to Oxford University in the inter-war years. Renowned for his Bible translations, Knox also wrote detective stories and sparkling satire. His cultivated background and capacity for friendship made him a welcome figure in society, he was famous for his wit - yet sometimes he wrestled with his own melancholy. His close friendships included Harold Macmillan and Evelyn Waugh, who wrote a biography of Knox two years after his death. Waugh's biography is, of course, a literary tour de force, but fifty years on the life of this brilliant and complex priest can now be set in the context of his own times, and of ours.Terry Tastard is a priest of Westminster Diocese and a Research Associate of the Von Hügel Institute, St Edmund's College, Cambridge.