Description
King of the Castle examines closely many of the unquestioned assumptions by which we live our lives, comparing them with the beliefs that have shaped and guided human life in the past. It begins with a consideration of how secular societies attempt to possess their citizens, body and soul and how, as a consequence, the necessity of redefining human responsibility becomes an ever more urgent imperative. The book continues with a presentation of the traditional view of man as ‘God’s Viceroy on Earth’, with an eye to its practical implications in a world that has all but forgotten, under the pressure of mass social persuasion, that man must always be free to choose his own ultimate destiny. The author’s thesis is a passionate yet incisive plea for the restoration of the sacred norms of religion, as against the debilitating and falsifying aims of a profane world-view based on no more than recent scientific and technological achievements.
Charles Le Gai Eaton was born in Switzerland and educated at Charterhouse and King’s College, Cambridge. He worked for many years as a teacher and journalist in Jamaica and Egypt (where he embraced Islam in 1951) before joining the British Diplomatic Service. For more than twenty years, he was consultant to the Islamic Cultural Centre in London. He is also the author of Islam and the Destiny of Man, Reflections and Remembering God, all published by the Islamic Texts Society. He died in 2010.
‘This marvellous book…abounds with penetrating insights… The most remarkable quality of the book however is its courage.’
Fourth World Review.
‘This is a book of the utmost importance to anyone concerned… with the really basic questions of human life.’
Country Life.
‘This is an urgent piece of writing, a reading of what we are and where we are.’
TLS.
‘Reading this book enormously influenced me. There are two reasons for this. One was that what the man said was so obviously right. The other was that Eaton is, as Cobbett was, a master of the English language. His writing is direct, elegant, but most of all devastatingly persuasive.’
John Seymour.
‘There is useful reading here for Christians… who come into contact with Muslims.’
Church Times.
‘How much sharper is his call for ecological respect than our current pragmatic codes of conservation.’
Guardian.
