Credo Paperback

Much of Mary Warnock's published work had focused on particular ethical problems - from issues in medicine to the place of religion in politics - but here she writes for the first time about her own personal convictions.

As an active, independently minded participant in British politics and as a philosopher at the centre of the subject for half a century, she has seen fashions come and go, and now in her eighties she is ready to articulate and defend what she believes of life and the religious.

The human imagination, she argues, makes it possible for us to catch glimpses of things other than what is before our eyes.

For some this is religion. For others, including herself, it is the symbolic or the aesthetic - music and art - that takes the imagination near to religious ideas.

As a humanist who values religion for its unique contribution to human society, she offers a thought-provoking and deeply felt contribution to debates about personal well-being.