Keith Ward—philosopher, ethicist, theologian, Anglican priest, cathedral canon, and book-writing addict—has spent his life thinking about “the big questions” (and, what’s more, getting paid for it!). This philosophical pilgrimage led him from jobs at Glasgow and St. Andrew’s Universities in Scotland, to Cambridge University, then on to King’s College, London, followed by Oxford University (by invitation of the Queen!), before moving back to London at Gresham College, Heythrop College, and Roehampton University. Along the way he became a fellow of the British Academy and of a number of academic institutions, gathering up doctorates from various places, and writing more books than your bookshelf can handle. This sounds awfully dull, but according to Keith Ward, it was great fun, and he experienced all these things with a feeling of slight surprise, and with an irrepressible sense of humour.
Having retired, exhausted, at eighty-one, Ward could not resist one more book. This is it—a humorous account of his life and thought, especially to show how he developed his own philosophy of personal idealism. It is both a genuinely amusing account of the life of an English academic and a rather profound account of an anti-materialistic and scientifically informed philosophy.
