John Newton
'Master biographer Jonathan Aitken is in fine form, sympathetic, insightful, scholarly and vivid, and his book, like its subject, must be rated unobtrusively spectacular.'
J. I. Packer
'...meticulously researched...[Aiken] writes beautifully and accessibly.'
Christianity
'This is a book to inform your mind, warm your heart and inspire your Christian walk. I cannot recommend it more highly.'
Evangelical Times
From Newton's rip-roaring adventures on the high seas to his emergence as a pivotal figure in the abolitionist and evangelical movements, this is a life of amazing achievement as well as of Amazing Grace.
John Newton is best known as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace but this brilliant new biography shows how he led one of the most colourful and influential lives of the 18th century. Using a wealth of unpublished material, Jonathan Aitken charts Newton's journey through slave-trading, best-selling authorship, ordination, church leadership, abolitionist campaigning and the spiritual mentoring of William Wilberforce and William Cowper.
Jonathan Aitken is a former MP and cabinet minister. He is now an author, biographer and broadcaster.
In 1995, the court found him guilty of perjury in a celebrated case against the Guardian newspaper and he spent 18 months in Belmarsh Prison. He subsequently studied theology at Oxford and in 2019, he was ordained an Anglican priest. He is now a full-time prison chaplain in London.
He is the author of an award-winning biography of President Richard Nixon and has written a number of critically acclaimed books for Bloomsbury Continuum – including a bestselling life of Margaret Thatcher (2013).