Listen free for 30 days
-
Leaving Alexandria
- A Memoir of Faith and Doubt
- Narrated by: Richard Holloway
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs
People who bought this also bought...
-
Stories We Tell Ourselves
- Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: Richard Holloway
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of what it all means: our place in a small corner of one of billions of galaxies, at the end of billions of years of existence. In this new book Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are.
-
-
Please Listen To This Book
- By Margie on 06-12-20
-
A Little History of Religion
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: James Bryce
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion - from the dawn of religious belief to the 21st century - with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young listeners, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith.
-
-
Fascinating book
- By Mr. Paul M. Quirk on 05-01-17
-
Honest Doubt
- The History of an Epic Struggle
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: Richard Holloway
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May/June 2012. In Honest Doubt: The History Of An Epic Struggle, Richard Holloway considers some of the universal questions about our existence and the meaning of life, and how some of humanity's best thinkers and most creative writers have approached these 'literally life and death questions'.
-
-
Insight??
- By John on 02-03-16
-
A History of the Bible
- The Book and Its Faiths
- By: John Barton
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bible is the central book in Western culture, yet extraordinarily there is no proper history of it. This exceptional work, by one of the world's leading Biblical scholars, provides a full account of how the different parts of the Bible came to be written; how some writings which were regarded as holy became canonical and were included in the Bible, and others were not; what the relationship is of the different parts of the Bible to each other; and how, once it became a stable text, the Bible has been disseminated and interpreted around the world.
-
-
Profoundly important new account of the Bible
- By Kl Love on 20-01-20
-
Christianity
- The First Three Thousand Years
- By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 46 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read or heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.
-
-
Jesus, this is interesting
- By Mr on 15-02-15
-
Humankind
- A Hopeful History
- By: Rutger Bregman
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Rutger Bregman
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.
-
-
Misunderstanding the world
- By Myles Hocking on 08-09-20
-
Stories We Tell Ourselves
- Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: Richard Holloway
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Throughout history we have told ourselves stories to try and make sense of what it all means: our place in a small corner of one of billions of galaxies, at the end of billions of years of existence. In this new book Richard Holloway takes us on a personal, scientific and philosophical journey to explore what he believes the answers to the biggest of questions are.
-
-
Please Listen To This Book
- By Margie on 06-12-20
-
A Little History of Religion
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: James Bryce
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In an era of hardening religious attitudes and explosive religious violence, this book offers a welcome antidote. Richard Holloway retells the entire history of religion - from the dawn of religious belief to the 21st century - with deepest respect and a keen commitment to accuracy. Writing for those with faith and those without, and especially for young listeners, he encourages curiosity and tolerance, accentuates nuance and mystery and calmly restores a sense of the value of faith.
-
-
Fascinating book
- By Mr. Paul M. Quirk on 05-01-17
-
Honest Doubt
- The History of an Epic Struggle
- By: Richard Holloway
- Narrated by: Richard Holloway
- Length: 4 hrs and 29 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May/June 2012. In Honest Doubt: The History Of An Epic Struggle, Richard Holloway considers some of the universal questions about our existence and the meaning of life, and how some of humanity's best thinkers and most creative writers have approached these 'literally life and death questions'.
-
-
Insight??
- By John on 02-03-16
-
A History of the Bible
- The Book and Its Faiths
- By: John Barton
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bible is the central book in Western culture, yet extraordinarily there is no proper history of it. This exceptional work, by one of the world's leading Biblical scholars, provides a full account of how the different parts of the Bible came to be written; how some writings which were regarded as holy became canonical and were included in the Bible, and others were not; what the relationship is of the different parts of the Bible to each other; and how, once it became a stable text, the Bible has been disseminated and interpreted around the world.
-
-
Profoundly important new account of the Bible
- By Kl Love on 20-01-20
-
Christianity
- The First Three Thousand Years
- By: Diarmaid MacCulloch
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 46 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Once in a generation, a historian will redefine his field, producing a book that demands to be read or heard - a product of electrifying scholarship conveyed with commanding skill. Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity is such a book. Breathtaking in ambition, it ranges back to the origins of the Hebrew Bible and covers the world, following the three main strands of the Christian faith.
-
-
Jesus, this is interesting
- By Mr on 15-02-15
-
Humankind
- A Hopeful History
- By: Rutger Bregman
- Narrated by: Thomas Judd, Rutger Bregman
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.
-
-
Misunderstanding the world
- By Myles Hocking on 08-09-20
-
The Poems of T. S. Eliot
- Read by Jeremy Irons
- By: T. S. Eliot
- Narrated by: Jeremy Irons, Dame Eileen Atkins
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons' perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity. Major poems range from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' through the post-war desolation of 'The Waste Land' and the spiritual struggle of 'Ash-Wednesday', to the enduring charm of 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'.
-
-
I hope this helps........
- By Peter Clinch on 12-06-18
-
Engleby
- By: Sebastian Faulks
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the novel opens in the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a "traditional" school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power.
-
-
Dark and a little disturbing!
- By Charlotte on 19-10-10
-
The Living Mountain
- A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland
- By: Nan Shepherd, Robert Macfarlane, Jeanette Winterson
- Narrated by: Tilda Swinton, Robert MacFarlane, Jeanette Winterson
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this masterpiece of nature writing, beautifully narrated by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.
-
-
Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!!!!! Ruined!
- By macleanJohn on 29-02-20
-
Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
- By: Henri J. M. Nouwen
- Narrated by: Joe Abbey-Colborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Available as an audiobook for the first time ever, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life invites you to adopt Nouwen as your personal spiritual guide. Each session was carefully prepared by Dr. Michael Christensen, an award-winning professor of Christian ministry and practice, and Dr. Rebecca Laird, who was Nouwen’s student at Yale Divinity School. Like other volumes in The Nouwen Trilogy, this audiobook collects Nouwen’s unpublished homilies, interviews, classes, and speeches, as well as excerpts from his published writings.
-
The Woodlanders
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the Dorset landscape familiar to Hardy novels, The Woodlanders concerns the fortunes of Giles Winterborne, whose love for the well-do-do Grace Melbury is challenged by the arrival of a dashing and dissolute doctor, Edred Fitzpiers. When the mysterious Mrs Charmond further complicates the romantic entanglements, marital choice and class mobility become inextricably linked.
-
-
Superb
- By Christine Miskelly on 25-01-16
-
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Colin Farrell
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This quintessential coming-of-age novel describes the early life of Stephen Dedalus. It is set in Ireland during the 19th century, which was a time of emerging Irish nationalism and conservative Catholicism. Highly autobiographical in nature, the work is also notable for its being the first one in which Joyce uses innovative “stream of consciousness” writing style. A Portrait... follows Stephen Dedalus from his babyhood into early adulthood.
-
-
tantalising, tickling all of the senses
- By Hannah on 11-03-19
-
Mere Christianity
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Howard
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
2012 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of C. S. Lewis’s classic, Mere Christianity. Having sold over half a million copies in the UK alone, his overview of Christianity has been imitated many times, but never outdone. Mere Christianity brings together Lewis’s legendary broadcasts from the war years; talks in which he set out simply to ‘"explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times."
-
-
Classic
- By Mika on 13-10-16
-
The Righteous Mind
- Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
- By: Jonathan Haidt
- Narrated by: Jonathan Haidt
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.
-
-
It's like taking the red pill :)
- By beka on 06-06-18
-
Jesus
- The Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary
- By: Marcus J. Borg
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Come to know Jesus as you have never known him before: as a revolutionary prophet with an exciting new moral vision. Top biblical scholar Marcus J. Borg, after a lifetime of work and study, presents a historically accurate Jesus unlike any we have previously seen. This Christ is a charismatic sage and healer who courageously and surprisingly confronts the societal crises of his day, a man living in the power of the spirit and dedicated to radical social change.
-
The Secret History
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Donna Tartt
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The smartest murder-mystery you will ever hearA misfit at an exclusive New England college, Richard finds kindred spirits in the five eccentric students of his ancient Greek class. But his new friends have a horrific secret. When blackmail and violence threaten to blow their privileged lives apart, they drag Richard into the nightmare that engulfs them. And soon they enter a terrifying heart of darkness from which they may never return.
-
-
amazing book
- By Judith on 16-06-16
-
North and South
- By: Elizabeth Gaskell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written at the request of Charles Dickens, North and South is a book about rebellion that poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Gaskell expertly blends individual feeling with social concern and her heroine, Margaret Hale, is one of the most original creations of Victorian literature. When Margaret Hale's father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience she is forced to leave her comfortable home in the tranquil countryside of Hampshire....
-
-
an interesting novel made special by the reading
- By Margaret on 27-12-10
-
The New Testament
- By: Bart D. Ehrman, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Bart D. Ehrman
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether taken as a book of faith or a cultural artifact, the New Testament is among the most significant writings the world has ever known, its web of meaning relied upon by virtually every major writer in the last 2,000 years. Yet the New Testament is not only one of Western civilization’s most believed books, but also one of its most widely disputed, often maligned, and least clearly understood, with a vast number of people unaware of how it was written and transmitted.
-
-
Utterly Compelling
- By Jonathan on 23-11-14
Summary
Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize 2013
At 14, Richard Holloway left his home in the Vale of Leven, north of Glasgow, and travelled hundreds of miles to be educated and trained for the priesthood by a religious order in an English monastery. By 25, he had been ordained and was working in the slums of Glasgow. Throughout the following 40 years, Richard touched the lives of many people in the Church and in the wider community. But behind his confident public face lay a restless, unquiet heart and a constantly searching mind.
Richard Holloway reads his number two Sunday Times best-selling memoir with honesty, emotion, and great character. It was directed by Matt Thompson with music by Capella Nova.Critic reviews
More from the same
What listeners say about Leaving Alexandria
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- polly
- 13-01-17
An honest and moving memoir
An exceptional book. If you are interested in Anglo Catholicism and the dreadful knots and schisms it has experienced over the last thirty or forty years, Richard Holloway's account of his life within the church and the politics of religion is fascinating.
The tragedy of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the decisions and divisions which resulted from that date, are laid bare and the church is seen in all its arrogance.
Richard Holloway reads his own book bravely, sings and recites poetry - lays himself bare to the reader/listener.
For anyone who has questioned his/her own faith, admired religious men and women for their dedication but worried about whether they also have crises of faith along the way, for believers and sceptics alike, this book illustrates and discusses the decisions we make in life and the trials and consequences we inevitably face.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kirstine
- 30-03-18
An admirable man’s struggle with his faith
In his own words Richard Holloway relates the story of his life from a humble background in the Vale of Leven in the West of Scotland through different callings both here and abroad to his final appointment as Primus of the Episcopal church in Scotland.
It is a highly personal story as he tells of his innermost feelings with no holds barred. I am sorry to hear of how tormented he has been by his struggles over his religious faith, but interested how his beliefs have evolved and mellowed over his life. He stands out as a humane and caring man who has dedicated his life to helping others, not least LGBT community for whom he has been a courageous supporter, and for others also shunned by religious people who stick rigidly to what they see as the immutable doctrines of faith as set down in the bible. As a non-believer I cheer his arguments demonstrating the irrationality and illogicality of some of these doctrines, however his questioning of these tenets of faith often got him in hot water and released some vicious responses that I imagine would have appalled Jesus
A most interesting and thought-provoking book for both those with and without religious faith.
Read excellently (and at times sung!) by the author the narrative seems even more personal and moving.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mrspatriciacherry
- 07-12-19
Fascinating and inspiring
If you want to read or listen to a book that tips you over the edge of what you believe, this is an honest account of the inside of being a priest.
How far the church and religion has come from the original Jesus.
I love this mans books. Have also listened to A Little History of Religion. They have confirmed what I experienced and why I can no longer worship in any kind of church. Give me the green fields and nature and there I will find God.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John Welsh
- 04-09-18
A wonderful memoir, beautifully read
Having recently read with great interest Richard Holloway's Waiting for the Last Bus and Loves and Doubts, I was keen to listen to this autobiographical memoir read by the man himself. I loved it - for it's warm humanism, it's honest criticisms of religion and it's institutions, and its fascinating tale of a journey from faith to doubt that is always filled with compassion for his fellow man. Richard's reading of his own memoir is superb and often moving. I look forward to reading more of his books.