Bøger af Keith Seddon

Part autobiography, part analysis, part philosophy, part polemic, this little book explores the disquiet and despair that has coloured the author's life from childhood, and through which the malignancy of the modern world is filtered. It continues the author's journal entries begun in his previous book, Another Grief Observed, written in the months after the death of his wife in 2014. The exploration of despair is the exploration of the human condition and how self- conscious, sentient beings can face the inevitability of suffering.

By turns sorrowful, yearning, humorous, but always reflective, this little book distils a fragile life - one circumscribed by fears and the trials of long-term illness - into 38 poems, most of them written in the year before the author's unexpected and sudden death. They are accompanied by two essays that examine the nature of suffering and how to live in its presence.

Inspired by C. S. Lewis's book A Grief Observed, and at intervals responding to Lewis's thoughts, in this intimate and personal series of journal entries written in the three months after the sudden death of his wife, philosopher and writer Keith Seddon observes his own grief and how it impacts on his life. The exploration of grief is the exploration of the human condition and how self-conscious, sentient beings can face the inevitability of suffering. The author's writings are supported by two essays written by his wife, Jocelyn Almond, that also seek responses and solutions to the problem of evil.

This essay connects the author's experience of current affairs to his personal story of grief, attempting a fusing of the autobiographical with the polemical and political. It places personal despair into a global context of political manipulation to which we are all subject, whether its victims are aware of it or not, drawing on the work of documentary film-maker Adam Curtis as its impetus.

THE THIRD OF THREE SLIM VOLUMES Roger L'Estrange, staunch royalist, author and pamphleteer, one-time inmate of Newgate Prison, one-time exile, one-time Member of Parliament, takes up the teaching of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, rearranging and paraphrasing the original Latin to shape a unique and engaging work of his own. True friendship, based on Stoic principles, provides a certain antidote against all calamities, and even the fear of poverty, the hurt of death, and the lamentations of grief may be turned aside by those who possess a proper philosophy. This third slim volume is the concluding part of Roger L'Estrange's Seneca of a Happy Life, being itself an extract of a much larger whole, Seneca's Morals, first published in 1678.

THE SECOND OF THREE SLIM VOLUMES Roger L'Estrange, staunch royalist, author and pamphleteer, one-time inmate of Newgate Prison, one-time exile, one-time Member of Parliament, takes up the teaching of the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, rearranging and paraphrasing the original Latin to shape a unique and engaging work of his own. Although it is not in our power to prevent fortune from sending us perils and trials, we may yet meet them with courage, free of perturbation, and bear them as unkind seasons, neither frightened of terrors nor grieving for lost pleasures. This slim volume is the second of three parts of Roger L'Estrange's Seneca of a Happy Life, being itself an extract of a much larger whole, Seneca's Morals, first published in 1678.