Volume fourteen of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. Beginning in the winter of 1940/1 and ending with the uneasy 'sunrise' of peace in 1945, this volume sees Phillip Maddison striving idealistically to hold a balance while lamenting the division and possible total ruin of Europe, as he copes with the day-to-day problems of running the East Anglian farm he has wrested from virtual wilderness. The pattern of everyday living in those years is lovingly evoked: the bomber-haunted nights, the petty profiteering and gossip of country life - all essential, but often unrecorded, elements of the wartime scene. 'The sequence will stand, at the end, as a massive emotional record.' Guardian

Through paintings, sculpture, and the decorative arts, Luther Link examines common perceptions of the Devil's image and attributes - his tail, horns, flaming hair, pitchfork. Yet, as Link shows, there is no one standard depiction of Satan, just as he has no one name. Behind the mask of evil, he has taken a bewildering variety of forms: he can be the bloated and wanton cannibal of Giotto's Last Judgment; he can be half wise old man, half malevolent monster; he can even be beautiful and grand, as in the Limbourg Brothers' Fall of Lucifer. Link's compelling text identifies for the first time the origins of many of the Devil's features, provides new perspectives on the image of the Devil today and in medieval and early Renaissance times, and offers unexpected insights or artworks ranging from illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, and reliefs to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes. Drawing on original textual sources, including colorful accounts of the Devil's origins in the Bible, the Apocrypha, the writings of St. Augustine, and reports on the intrigues of popes and emperors, Link produces a fresh view of this powerful and mysterious figure.

Entries identify more than twenty thousand people, places, expressions, and specialized terms from throughout the world, along with lists of related items that are considered as part of a group, and celebrated dying words.

Presenting the ancient Holy Grail lineage from Asia and how the Knights Templar were initiated into it, this book reveals how ancient Asian wisdom became the foundation for the Holy Grail legend.