Alan Mcmanus: 11 books

Spiritual reflections on dogs can teach us lessons that just might save our lives. Thank God for dogs who remind us to be happy in the moment, for dogs who play with sticks and tennis balls and let them lie when they’ve had enough. Thank God for dogs who get us out and about, who remind us that...

"Dreaming Anarchy" describes my fieldwork and theoretical reflection in the autumn of 2001 on a back-to-nature community occupying a Pyrenean village in Spanish Territory. The self-conscious methodology I adopted was to record and analyse my own dreams while in the community, using "The Interpretation...

What is a doctor of philosophy, whose thesis on education-as-alchemy focuses on the metaphysics of Quality, doing writing about food? Why am I interested in what, when and how people eat and what are my qualifications for writing a book about body-logic? Why, in other words, should you read this book?...

Bruno’s father has dementia and neither the unusually hot Scottish summer nor even Justin’s habitual strip-teasing can take his mind off the slow ebbtide of Alzheimer’s. Justin’s suggestion of going to a Psychic Fayre leads to Bruno overhearing a tarot card reading, with cards on the table...

After Bruno suffers a long-expected family bereavement, Justin and Imogen get him a fun present: a mystery weekend at Corpington Manor at Old Yule. All’s fun (although very weird) until they lose a night, are imprisoned in a freezing cellar and escape back home where Clara tells them to get some...

Bruno finally turns forty and proposes to his friends that they open a small school. Unbeknownst to Bruno, Clara has inherited a property with some money and her organisational skills make this unlikely project possible. Justin and Imogen and other friends are persuaded to join the new venture. But...

In a quirky flat in the Westend of Glasgow, during the tension preceding the second Gulf War, Bruno walks in on Justin exercising and gives in to his pleading to massage taut muscles. As Justin groans in pleasure, Bruno reads him a strange astrological dream, a dream which begins to echo eerily in...

From the no-man's-land of the continuing conflict over abortion, "Life Choice" listens to women and makes a plea for women on differing sides to respect the integrity of the motivation of their sisters - even when they totally disagree - and suggests that questioning the automatic link between...

Sexual politics gets very personal as radical second wave feminists raise fears about persons with penises in female public toilets; midwives are instructed that the word ‘mother’ is discriminatory to pregnant trans men; and transactivists relate their experience of exclusion from female space...

The mysterious silvered words of prophecy on a tapestry of Irish linen just seem part of the Hebridean island charm of Tìr nam Bàn, where Bruno and his friends are taking kids on a school trip for a week’s retreat in a rebuilt Old Catholic Nunnery. Despite the uptight Abbess, and Justin’s fear...

In what should be the happiest time of his life – teaching at a good school, with great friends, a lovely lover and a child to raise jointly on the way – Bruno Benedetti stands weeping on a bridge over the motorway that passes through Glasgow's Charing Cross. Under the midnight rain, poised between...