Love Without End: A Story of Heloise and Abelard

'Melvyn Bragg's account of the passionate and painful love affair between the 12th century radical theologian, Peter Abelard, and the brilliant young convent-educated Eloise springs magnificently to life . . . Thrilling.' Piers Plowright, Tablet Paris in 1117. Heloise, a brilliant young scholar, is astonished when the famous, radical philosopher, Peter Abelard, consents to be her tutor. But what starts out as a meeting of minds turns into a passionate, dangerous love affair, which incurs terrible retribution. Nine centuries later, Arthur is in Paris to recreate the extraordinary story of Heloise and Abelard in a novel. To his surprise, his daughter visits and agrees to help, challenging his portraits of a couple who seem often inscrutable, sometimes breathtakingly modern. It soon emerges she is on her own mission to discover more about her parents' fractured relationship - and that Arthur's connection to his subject is more emotional than he cares to admit.

About the Author :
Melvyn Bragg was born in Wigton, Cumbria, in 1939. He went to the local Grammar School and then to Wadham College, Oxford. He joined the BBC in 1961, and published his first novel, For Want of a Nail, in 1965. He left the BBC and continued to write novels which include The Soldier's Return (WH Smith Literary Award), Without a City Wall (Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and Now Is the Time (Parliamentary Book Award 2016). A Place in England, Son of War and Crossing the Lines were all nominated for the Booker Prize. His non-fiction includes The Adventure of English and The Book of Books, and his first memoir, Back in the Day, was published in 2022 to critical acclaim. He edited and presented The South Bank Show from 1977 and hosted the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time from 1998. He has now retired from both. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society and of The British Academy. He was given a Peerage in 1998 and a Companion of Honour in 2017.

Review :
The 12th-Century love story of the brilliant scholar Heloise and radical philosopher Peter Abelard has long endured, and here Bragg recreates their tragic tale for a modern audience. It's an atmospheric, thought-provoking retelling. - Mail on Sunday Melvyn Bragg brings a fascinated attention to the moral complexities of a love story we all thought we knew, but perhaps did not understand well enough. His compassion for Abelard and Heloise makes brilliantly real and present to us their anguished journey from erotic excess towards the mystical sublime. - Rose Tremain Bragg brilliantly re-imagines the legendary love story of Heloise and Abelard, uniting the middle ages and today in this thrilling novel. - Antonia Fraser A tour de force - a moving, poignant, compelling tale, wonderfully told. I have never read such true and compellingly depicted accounts of sexual desire and encounter, and Paris, both medieval and modern, comes vividly before one. - A.C. Grayling Bragg has mastered his sources, chiefly the letters of Abelard and Heloise and Abelard's autobiographical Historia Calamitaturn. By the pen of Arthur the novelist, Bragg with his own flair and perceptive imagination tells their story . . . Bragg's ability to live inside the minds of these two mighty philosophical and theological intellectuals. He understands their agonies, their manipulation . . . and persecution . . . Bragg writes his version of this life-long love with ease and confidence. It is a pleasure to read; and to be reminded of Chaucer's fastidious Prioress whose shining gold brooch declares: "Amor vincit omnia." - Spectator In this fascinating, haunting evocation of two people aflame with passion and love of learning, Melvyn Bragg dramatises the struggle to find consolation in faith - Daily Mail A fictionalised account of legendary star-crossed lovers unfolds in tandem with the struggles of its author . . . it all comes together in a rich tapestry of devotion. - Observer What is distinctive about Bragg's approach is his emphasis on the intellectual content of the learned lovers' affair. In Pope's poem, Eloise makes just one reference to Abelard's "adored ideas". Here they are central , and so are hers. - Sunday Times