Alumni Services

November 2013

Each month, we bring you a selection of new books written by Edinburgh alumni. For the first time, we bring you details of two books written by a husband and wife respectively, as well as a Kindle-only novel. We have also partnered with Blackwell's bookshop to compile a special Christmas list of books published by alumni in 2013.

Richard Brown

Author Richard Brown
Edinburgh degree Tropical Veterinary Medicine 1984
Book One Life Two Worlds

This story begins peacefully with a student back packer, Richard Jones, wandering through South America . It concludes more than a decade later with a violent crescendo in Belize.

By coincidence when travelling in Colombia Richard meets Padrone the head of a major international drug cartel. Years later Richard is sent as an Aid worker to the town of Orange Walk in Belize. Hidden in that town is Padrone’s representative, a shadowy man simply known as the Coordinator. The authorities, in their desperation to halt the development of the drug trade, go so far as to recruit Richard and his wife Jill to help identify the Coordinator. This results in an unpredictable finale.

Two worlds coexist in much of Central and South America :- the humdrum day to day world of ordinary folk and the violent world of narcotics, crime and power. It is possible to live one life and inhabit the two worlds. To reflect this paradox the chapters in this novel alternate in style describing coexisting events found in the ‘ordinary’ life and the drug scene.

Only available on Amazon Kindle.

Beatrice Hale

Author Beatrice Hale
Edinburgh degree Social Anthropology 1968
Book entitled Family Care and Social Capital: Transitions in Caregiving

Co-authored by Patrick Barrett and Mary Butler, Beatrice Hale's latest work examines a range of family caregiving situations from across the life course. It seeks to capture the dynamics of caregiving in a number of common situations: caregiving during infancy, for adults who acquire a disability through accidents or illness, for older people with age-related issues, and caregiving by children and adolescent carers and grandparent carers. In drawing attention to key moments of vulnerability faced by family and informal caregivers, and by suggesting how to assist ‘reconnection’ at these moments, the book provides a guide for those working in the area of health, disability and care.

John Hale

Author Dr John Hale
Edinburgh degree PhD English
Book The Complete Works of John Milton: Volume VIII: De Doctrina Christiana

Beatrice Hale's husband, Dr John Hale, has had his latest work published by Oxford University Press. Co-edited by J. Donald Cullington this guide addresses 'De Doctrina Christiana', John Milton's longest work. The edition aims above all at accuracy, clarity, and completeness, presenting Latin and English on facing pages, amplifying the Biblical citations where necessary, and adding extensive annotations not only on the text and its transcription but also on the content and context of Milton's ideas. The provenance and history of the work are expertly narrated, enabling readers to get closer than ever before to its composition. Milton's Latin is examined in unprecedented detail, and the translation aims to reproduce the nuances and changes of register which characterize his Latin in all its individuality - from the high-flown rhetoric of his arguments in favour of divorce and polygamy, and against tithing, to the plainer style of those sections where he states his main points more dispassionately but bolsters them with strong and wide-ranging Biblical support.