January 2019

Writing with co-author Dr Elaine Atkins under the pseudonym Mirren Jones, 'Never Do Harm' introduces us to Hugh, a successful hospital consultant in Edinburgh, arrogant, egotistical and hugely ambitious.  He is admired and loathed in equal amounts by his colleagues and humours his long-suffering wife Anne.  His lifelong friend Alan is a hardworking General Practitioner based in Musselburgh, valued by his patients, if not by his partners and staff.  He’s on the cusp of burn-out, and increasingly cynical about life, yet still loved by his magnetic wife Simone – a French sculptress of bronze figurines.   

Like all doctors, they took the Hippocratic Oath, swearing to ‘Never Do Harm’, and keep it for 30 years.

But in private life must the value still apply?  What if temptation arises? Can betrayals remain secret?  Who is being harmed?

The novel sweeps from France to Edinburgh, largely set in the Scottish National Health Service in the new millennium, a challenging time of intense organisational change.  

By turns dark and humorous, this psychological drama explores the meaning of ‘harm’ – both intended and unintentional, and begs the question: How far can you ever trust anyone?

Never Do Harm

2.

Are you confused by the feedback you get from your academic teachers and mentors? This clear and accessible guide to decoding academic feedback will help you interpret what your lecturer or research supervisor is really trying to tell you about your writing - and show you how to fix it. We will help you master a range of techniques and strategies to take your writing to the next level and along the way you'll learn why academic text looks the way it does, and how to produce that 'authoritative scholarly voice' that everyone talks about. 

This book is an easy to use resource for postgraduate students and researchers in all disciplines, and even professional academics, to diagnose their writing issues and find ways to fix them. This book would also be a valuable text for academic writing courses and writing groups, such as those offered in doctoral and masters by research degree programmes. 

How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble: A Practical Guide

Christian tradition has largely held three theological affirmations on the resurrection of the physical body. Firstly, that bodily resurrection is not a superfluous hope of afterlife. Secondly, there is immediate post-mortem existence in Paradise. Finally, there is numerical identity between pre-mortem and post-resurrection human beings. The same tradition also largely adheres to a robust doctrine of The Intermediate State, a paradisiacal disembodied state of existence following the biological death of a human being. This book argues that these positions are in fact internally inconsistent, and so a new theological model for life after death is required.

The opening arguments of the book aim to show that The Intermediate State actually undermines the necessity of bodily resurrection. Additionally, substance dualism, a principle The Intermediate State requires, is shown to be equally untenable in this context. In response to this, the metaphysics of the afterlife in Christian theology is re-evaluated, and after investigating physicalist and constitutionist replacements for substance dualist metaphysics, a new theory called "Eschatological Presentism" is put forward. This model combines a broadly Thomistic hylemorphic metaphysics with a novel theory of Time.

This is an innovative examination of the doctrine of life after death. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of analytic theology and philosophy of religion.

On the Resurrection of the Dead