Between Heaven and Earth: A Journey With My Grandfather

by Robert Nurden

Stanley James, as a young man in the Canadian West, was by turns a cowboy, shepherd, navvy, hobo and newspaper reporter, soldier in the Spanish-American war, poet, playwright and actor. Returning to his native England, he married and became a Nonconformist minister who both charmed and alienated his Walthamstow congregation with his socialism and pacifism. In 1923 he converted and reinvented himself as one of the best-known Catholic writers of the English-speaking world, with nine books to his name. Widely respected for his knowledge, passion and insight, he worked alongside Bertrand Russell and counted G.K. Chesterton among his friends.Yet the chance discovery of hundreds of secret letters and diaries of three women – many quoted in this account – shattered the image. These documents show in intriguing and often explicit detail that, as a husband and father of seven, he had an affair and liaisons with members of his congregation. Just how much did his family and friends know?

324 pages, Paperback

Published September 6, 2020

About the author

Robert Nurden took a degree in English at Oxford Brookes University, later qualifying as a teacher. But he soon became a journalist, working on several local newspapers before landing in what used to be known as Fleet Street in the 1980s. Since then he has spent his professional life spinning his own words as a feature writer on the Independent, Guardian and Daily Telegraph or editing other people's.
Like many journalists, he spent many years hankering after the big project. In 2018 he found it by writing "Between Heaven and Earth", the biography of his controversial grandfather, Stanley James. His meticulous research took him to Canada, Ireland and to numerous libraries and archives around England and Wales. It has been described by Irish author Patrick Quigley as a 'spiritual thriller' and 'easily one of the best biographies I have ever read.' Website: www.robertnurden.com