Author: John Bowker
ISBN: 978-0-9782526-7-0 Synopsis An Alphabet of Animals gathers together in words and photographs some of the many ways in which people have looked at animals and have thought about them. From different ages, both past and present, and from many different parts of the world, this book records in words and photographs how people have responded to the animals around them.
Animals have been exploited and abused, but they have also been admired so much that a monkey has been seen as the manifestation of God on earth, and an ox has led the way to Enlightenment.
From Ants to Zoos, the Alphabet takes us into the worlds of animals and helps us to see and to understand them in a new way. Many poems and translations are quoted here, but some have been written or made specially for this book.
About the Author 
John Bowker is a prize-winning author who was formerly Professor of religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Professor at Gresham College, London. He has been Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and at North Carolina State University. He is the editor of The Oxfrd Dictionary of World Religions, and author of What Muslims Believe, God — A Brief History, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Religions, The Sacred Neuron, Beliefs that Changed the World: The History and Ideas of the Great Religions and The Meanings of Death, which won the HarperCollins Book Prize. Bowker's recent poetry book Before the Ending of the Day: Life & Love, Death & Redemption gathers in a single volume for the first time his collection of poems and translations. Also by John Bowker. Photographer Bryan Knox Most of Bryan’s childhood was spent in the countryside. His father was a very good naturalist and bird artist who gave him an interest in the natural world very early in life. At school he developed an interest in photography inspired by one of the great pioneers of bird photography Eric Hosking, and this interest has continued throughout his life. He spent his national service in the Royal Navy on submarines, then 2 years in Kenya at Agricultural College before returning to the UK to farm. He married in 1955 and bought a small farm in Devon where he still lives with two married sons in family partnership running dairy and pig enterprises. In 1981 he was awarded an Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society in natural history and has been lucky enough to travel to many countries including the Indian continent, north and south America, Europe and the Arctic and Antarctic photographing the natural world. Photographer Sonia Halliday She and Bryan Knox started to work together in 1997, when Sonia persuaded him to come to Chartres Cathedral in France. Sonia was there to update some photographs for the guide book for which she had provided the photography with Laura Lushington since 1976. Photographing stained glass was very different from the wildlife and flowers that Bryan had specialized in for the previous 50 years. After photographing stained glass in Chartres they went together to Israel to photograph the Biblical sites -- although the attraction for Bryan was the wild flowers! This trip culminated in their book (with John Bowker writing the text), The Aerial Atlas of the Holy Land, published by Mitchell Beazley in October 2008. Sonia has been visiting Israel often since she went to school there in 1947. www.soniahalliday.com
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