Christopher Villiers (Author of Sonnets From the Spirit)

Christopher Villiers liked Meredith R. Tolan's review of Versing the Mystery: Poems: "Mr Villiers words transcend the page and caress my mind. His spirituality is intensely intimate and inspiring. His verses conjure much more than the sacred. Reading his poetry feels so modern and classical at the same time. This collection, Versing t" Read more of this review »
Dec 27, 2025 01:21AM · see review
Christopher Villiers and 1 other person liked Avellina Balestri's review of Versing the Mystery: Poems: "As a Catholic poet with a keen sense of appreciation for classic literature, Christopher Villiers has created a work with multiple layers to be peeled back in order for each flavor to be properly savored. It is evocative of Dante's Comedy structure w" Read more of this review »
Dec 27, 2025 01:12AM · see review
Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing Roy Campbell: A Critical Biography by Peter F. Alexander	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Aug 10, 2025 09:13AM · like
Christopher Villiers liked Marcelle's review of Versing the Mystery: Poems: "Versing the Mystery, written by award-winning British theologian and poet Christopher Villiers, is a breathtaking collection that seamlessly weaves together the timeless beauty of Scripture and vast range of the human experience, with the elegance of" Read more of this review »
Apr 03, 2025 07:57AM · see review
Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing Pendragon's Shield: A Poetry Collection by Avellina Balestri (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is a charming first book of poems from a promising young writer. It of course relatively easy to be promising when young but one can hope that Ms Balestri shall persevere in the years to come and develop her already fine literary talents, explor ...more
Jan 01, 2025 08:40AM · like · see review
Christopher Villiers is now following Meredith R. Tolan's reviews
Dec 06, 2024 08:30AM · like
Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing St. John of the Cross : Poems by Roy Campbell	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Nov 08, 2024 03:19AM · like
Christopher Villiers is now following G. Connor Salter Author of Fellowship & Fairydust - Tales of Chivalry: A M...
Aug 23, 2024 01:51AM · like
Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing All Ye That Pass By: Book 1: Gone for a Soldier by Avellina Balestri (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Avellina Balestri continues her literary explorations of faith and history in this novel, the first of a projected trilogy concerning the American Revolution. The main character, Edmund Southworth is from a recusant Catholic gentry family in Lancashi ...more
Aug 16, 2024 04:15AM · 1 like · like · see review
Christopher Villiers is now following Avellina Balestri Author of Saplings of Sherwood (The Telling of the Beads #1)
May 29, 2024 06:58AM · like

Christopher Villiers liked Meredith R. Tolan's review of Versing the Mystery: Poems:

Versing the Mystery by Christopher Villiers

"Mr Villiers words transcend the page and caress my mind. His spirituality is intensely intimate and inspiring. His verses conjure much more than the sacred. Reading his poetry feels so modern and classical at the same time. This collection, Versing t" Read more of this review »

Christopher Villiers and 1 other person liked Avellina Balestri's review of Versing the Mystery: Poems:

"As a Catholic poet with a keen sense of appreciation for classic literature, Christopher Villiers has created a work with multiple layers to be peeled back in order for each flavor to be properly savored. It is evocative of Dante's Comedy structure w" Read more of this review »

Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing

Roy Campbell: A Critical Biography
by Peter F. Alexander

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Christopher Villiers liked Marcelle's review of Versing the Mystery: Poems:

"Versing the Mystery, written by award-winning British theologian and poet Christopher Villiers, is a breathtaking collection that seamlessly weaves together the timeless beauty of Scripture and vast range of the human experience, with the elegance of" Read more of this review »

Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing

Pendragon's Shield: A Poetry Collection
by Avellina Balestri (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

This is a charming first book of poems from a promising young writer. It of course relatively easy to be promising when young but one can hope that Ms Balestri shall persevere in the years to come and develop her already fine literary talents, explor ...more

Christopher Villiers is now following Meredith R. Tolan's reviews

Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing

St. John of the Cross : Poems
by Roy Campbell

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Christopher Villiers is now following

G. Connor Salter

Author of Fellowship & Fairydust - Tales of Chivalry: A M...

Christopher Villiers rated a book it was amazing

All Ye That Pass By by Avellina Balestri

All Ye That Pass By: Book 1: Gone for a Soldier
by Avellina Balestri (Goodreads Author)

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Avellina Balestri continues her literary explorations of faith and history in this novel, the first of a projected trilogy concerning the American Revolution. The main character, Edmund Southworth is from a recusant Catholic gentry family in Lancashi Avellina Balestri continues her literary explorations of faith and history in this novel, the first of a projected trilogy concerning the American Revolution. The main character, Edmund Southworth is from a recusant Catholic gentry family in Lancashire. He is a young man who values his faith but chafes at the restrictions placed upon him by that account in eighteenth century England. He wishes to follow his distinguished ancestors into battle and like his childhood protestant playmates idolises General Wolfe who took Quebec for the British, but, among other prohibitions, British law will not allow a Catholic to even handle a weapon. Taught to venerate the Catholic martyrs of Protestant persecution, he is also drawn to the contemporary English martyrology of Wolfe whose death he conflates with theirs. The trilogy's title is taken from the Biblical Book of Lamentations passage "O all ye that pass by the way, attend, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow" (p8). Edmund's pious mother, Perpetua, who has suffered much from Protestants, wishes her son to interpret such passages in a exclusively Catholic manner but he has other ideas. With the death of his magnanimous and generous to a fault father, the Southworth family is saved from financial ruin by the late man's friend John Burgoyne. This amiable and louche figure, an influential politician and military man, befriends young Southworth, much to Perpetua's concern.

Burgoyne introduces him to a world beyond his village, offering him a glimpse of army life and even leading him to converse with King George III, sharpening his ambitions for a life of action and worldly importance. Southworth meets a distant cousin, Thomas Gage, whose parents abandoned Catholicism, enabling him to be a colonial administrator and general. Though the young recusant resists, the charms of his new surroundings erode his principles as water can erode the hardest of rock. Balestri has a flair for characterisation, not least in showing the complexities of Burgoyne, a loving husband and flagrant womaniser, a man with a sense of his own dignity who revels in flamboyant dramas of questionable artistic merit. A mixture of noble and ignoble, the sublime and the ridiculous. Southworth's thought to himself on seeing one of the man's plays, that it was like having eaten a soup of questionable mushrooms by his family's aged cook, is marvellous. All the while trouble is stirring in the American colonies...

Eventually, as his mother feared would happen, he renounces his faith by subscribing to the anti-Catholic Test Acts and receiving Anglican communion in order to enlist as an officer in the British army. There are revolts in Massachusetts and neighbouring area escalating into war and Southworth wishes to join his peers in battle. There is however a warning of what is to come as one of Burgoyne's fellow Member of Parliament predicts "Mark my words General Burgoyne: when next you set foot upon English soil, I fear it shall not be at the head of victorious hosts, but as a prisoner on parole."(p235) Enchanted by a charismatic older man, Southworth pays no heed to the arguments, pragmatic and idealistic, against this conflict and is prepared to stake all in fighting it. When he wavers at the grim denunciations of his family's faith he must sign the General issues an ultimatum:
"Listen to me Ned," Burgoyne intoned, a thick desperation rising in his throat, "Do you want to go your whole damn life branded as a coward at best or a traitor at worst? Do you want to abandon every manly obligation to your king and country and sever every tie of kinship with your fellows who are willing to seal their duty in blood? And all this for a pope who doesn't even know you exist?! Is that what you really want?!"(p237) Under the influence of drink and his surrogate father he finally succumbs to the blandishments of the Hanoverian establishment. With the American colonists in revolt Southworth becomes a staff officer to General Burgoyne and sails across the Atlantic.

Life as a redcoat turns out not to be one of utter glamour and easy glory. Beginning in Catholic Quebec where Southworth is confronted by a Catholic eucharistic procession, the army, accompanied by French Canadian and Native American troops moves towards New York. This is a war between kindred, with all the bitterness of a family feud and Balestri does not shy away from honest depictions of death and atrocity. Amid the bloodshed there is also the development of true comradeship, the bespectacled English clerk Lieutenant Rawcliffe, the Welsh Wesleyan Lieutenant Jones and the Ulster-Scots Protestant Lieutenant Thompson. The first two gradually come to like and trust Southworth, but Eli Thompson, a fierce Calvinist more at ease with animals than even fellow protestants among the human race, is true to his tribal hatred. Throughout the novel, disputes of history, politics and theology are necessarily played out, it is to Balestri's credit that these matters are generally explored in a manner that does not seem contrived. Rawcliffe is able to draw out Thompson into friendship and even assist him in his awkward wooing of an American Loyalist (General Burgoyne and his mistress' humorous amendments to his sketched out plan make fine comedy). The reader finds a pleasing mix of toughness and tenderness, martial severity and light relief.

Even in the army Burgoyne maintains the lifestyle of a Georgian gentleman of relaxed morals, with his dinner parties and French Canadian lover. We encounter the General's friend Simon Fraser, of Scots Jacobite (and possibly Catholic) upbringing, who has accommodated to the political and religious settlement. He is a man who can befriend women and children, even rebel ones, with aplomb while in the next moment conducting executions in the bloodiest and most inhuman manner. Like the Native Americans, as a Highlander he is often regarded as a savage and like Southworth is something of an outsider. Burgoyne asks Fraser to take the young man under his wing and he does indeed, having the more honourable as well as darker aspects of a warrior chief.

Edward Southworth first falls in lust, then love with a young woman procured for him by Burgoyne. Abigail, the daughter of an American revolutionary, loathes the Redcoats but is prepared to prostitute herself to them in hope of saving her imprisoned father. Balestri is good at showing the damage war causes to woman and children, "Abby" is scarred by the abuses, sexual and otherwise, the British have inflicted on her, she admits that she is broken inside. She questions the moral, religious and political case for the British Monarchy and its enforcement by violence upon her fellow colonists. The irony of rebel colonists demanding freedom from King George and denying it to their black slaves and Native American neighbours is not evaded, even if the woman's defence of slavery eventually being abolished in the colonies and the wickedness of the Natives whose land she feels entitled to will not satisfy all readers.

While she eventually falls in love with the romantic young Englishman she still hates his King bitterly. Southworth loves her but defends the regime for whom he sacrificed his spiritual and biological family, while inwardly questioning the price he paid. Abby sews an illicit Catholic relic into Southworth's shirt, sent by his loyal sister, seeing him as a fellow rebel against tyranny underneath his uniform. " Come with me Ned!" she seized his arm "You are not at peace with yourself where you are, for your loyalties are split already! You are better than those people around you, they are easily convinced of the royal supremacy, but you are not! In your heart of hearts, you resist, in matters great and small!...You have the strength of will to rebel!...England is lost! Let us be free of her! Let us be rid of her!" (p525) She has less success seducing him from his principles than Burgoyne did. Eventually, in an atmosphere of guerrilla warfare by the colonists and savage reprisals by the British army and their Native American allies, the tension explodes. The novel ends in pain and lost innocence. One awaits to discover what the future will hold for Edward Southworth in forthcoming novels, with a storyteller as accomplished as Avellina Balestri it can't be dull. ...more

Christopher Villiers is now following

Avellina Balestri

Author of Saplings of Sherwood (The Telling of the Beads #1)

Christopher Villiers’s Followers (10)

Christopher’s Bookshelves

Christopher’s Friends (3)

Christopher Villiers

Goodreads Author

Combine Editions
Christopher Villiers’s books

rss
Christopher’s Recent Updates

Christopher’s Friend Comments

	Sonnets From the Spirit 4.67 avg rating — 6 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Petals of Vision it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Another Odyssey it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Versing the Mystery: Poems it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Christopher Villiers’s Followers (10)

Christopher’s Bookshelves

Christopher’s Friends (3)

Christopher Villiers

Goodreads Author

Combine EditionsChristopher Villiers’s books

rssChristopher’s Recent Updates

Christopher’s Friend Comments

Combine Editions
Christopher Villiers’s books

rss
Christopher’s Recent Updates