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ADVANCE INFORMATION

Survival, Revival

and Moral

Revolution

The Life and Times of Alexander

Stewart

Simon Williams

KEY SELLING POINTS

The extraordinary story of Alexander Stewart who ran away to sea and survived ten years of captivity in
Napoleon’s prisons - popular history at its best.
Links Stewart’s life to the moral and political revolution which was transforming Britain in the 19th Century.
The compelling life of the author’s great-great-grandfather

The book tells two connected stories: the first is how the 14 year old Scot, Alexander Stewart, ran away to sea,
was captured by Napoleon in the year of Trafalgar, off the coast of Brighton. A prisoner of the French, in often
brutal conditions, he stood up to the bullies, taught himself French, the theory of navigation and Enlightenment
philosophy. He made four attempts to escape before returning to England and becoming a highly successful
Congregational minister who was presented to Queen Victoria on her accession and her coronation.

The second story tells how the Nonconformists returned from the margins of British society after the failure of
Cromwell’s rule to help transform the political and moral landscape of the nation. In two seismic years, the
middle classes got the vote and slavery was abolished in the British Empire. The nation moved, along with the
bulk of its population, from asking ‘what do we want to do’ to ‘what ought we do’. Stewart, a distinguished
preacher and educator, was at the heart of this revolution.

Simon Williams is a former teacher of history and headteacher of a mixed outer London comprehensive
school. He has written two popular school history books published by MacMillan: China since 1949; the Rise
and Fall of Hitler’s Germany. He is also the great-great grandson of Alexander Stewart and has had access to
the manuscript he wrote for the benefit of his children without which this story could not be told.

Publication Date: 28th May 2024 £13.99 ISBN: 9781805143604
Thema subject category: NH – History
paperback 216 x 138 mm 176 pp Portrait

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