In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult

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Mad Men star Alison Brie and The White Lotus hunk Jake Lacy enjoy an animated chat on the Gold Coast while filming Apples Never Fall There is a bit of heavy lifting in the early chapters as Rebecca Stott outlines the history of the Brethren - in between accounts of the final days with her father. It is essential though to understand what underpins the beliefs of the sect. The Exclusive Brethren were also wholly patriarchal, and the young Stott (now a novelist, expert Darwinist and professor at the University of East Anglia) is depicted silently bridling at how females must be “subject” to men, wear headscarves and sit in endless meetings listening to exclusively male blather. In a terrifying passage echoing Margaret Atwood’s dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale, Stott describes how one of her female relatives was sent to an asylum for decades, ostensibly because she was epileptic, but also because she was “wilful”. Paris Hilton's special meaning behindnewborn daughter's name London after surprising fans with baby arrival announcement I'm A Celeb's Tony Bellew and Nigel Farage leave viewers 'heaving' as they are forced to drink blended penises during gruesome trial: 'This is vile!'

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary: Fans 'obsessed' by show's 'glorious' new opening titles as sci-fi series makes it's epic return: 'The budget is insane!'This is a sad but gripping true story of Rebecca Stott's family who were 'caught up in' the Exclusive Brethren. 'Caught up in' being the phrase that her mother always used when describing their time in the Exclusive Brethren. They are a group who claim to be Christians but who exhibit an alarming amount of very un-Christian like behaviour. Their overall leader is known as the Elect Vessel and claims to be a prophet of God. He claims to speak the absolute word of God and if members do not agree with him they are immediately ‘withdrawn’. In most religions being ‘withdrawn’ or ‘excommunicated’ would mean that you are no longer on the membership list of that church. In the Exclusive Brethren it means that you are no longer to associate with members. So if you are 'withdrawn' you may well be immediately separated from your spouse, children, parent and entire family. This has led to severe mental health issues and many suicides. Chloe Ferry shows off her ample cleavage in a red crop top as she heads Christmas shopping with on/off boyfriend Johnny Wilbo Emily Ratajkowski reveals plans to write a book about divorce from ex-husband Sebastian Bear-McClard as she stars in shoot for Vogue Australia The young Roger’s first crisis of faith occurred at primary school. Having asked his teacher the exact distance of the children of Israel’s flight from Egypt to the promised land, he found it baffling that a trip of 65 miles should have taken a full 40 years, or an average of about eight yards a day. ‘And they were supposed to be travelling day and night. It made no sense. How could people walk that slowly?’ he wondered.

Linda Robson takes granddaughters Betsy and Lila to CBeebies pantomime afterannouncing split from her husband of 33 years Mark Dunford This book is important; ... there isn’t an uninteresting paragraph in this furious and compassionate book’ The Times Stott deploys her multiplicity of skills to good effect: as a historian, she delves into newspaper clippings, tape recordings, archive materials, a host of memoirs and books on doctrine, theology and the Exclusive Brethren. As a novelist, she makes the tale dramatic, especially the scene where her father is expelled from the Brethren, and that in which hundreds of Brethren from around the world gather in Alexandra Palace in 1962. As an essayist, Stott weaves ideas together with ease and economy: chance, Tribulation, Yeats’s gyres, Zeus’s “seduction” of Leda and Gabriel’s visit to Mary are yoked almost magically within the space of a single conversation the teenaged Stott has with her father while driving to a production of Macbeth. Still she cannot finally account for the destruction wreaked: there “was no … explanation I could offer my father or my younger self”, Stott writes; “there was no culprit to be caught, no handcuffs to be placed on the wrists of a single murderer or thief”. The result is a state of radical unknowing.

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The forecast adds: "Particularly windy in exposed areas. Heavy, and possibly thundery, showers developing on Monday. Feeling more humid." Northern Ireland We hear of Rebecca's young childhood in the last half of the 1960s when her family was still in the church. She was in a constant state of 'high alert' as they were warned that the rapture was close and that church members in good standing would be taken first. She spent much of her early years worrying that she’s be left behind and her whole family would be taken. Once at school she was not allowed to take part in many things as the church did not allow it. The list grew yearly and wasn’t just things like school assemblies but included classes about poetry or fiction, science about the creation story, gym, music, sports and many other things. So she often found herself in the long central corridor doing worksheets while seeing her brothers also in that corridor on their own. After a she got to go to the school library where she started devouring normal books but had to keep this a secret from her family as it wasn't allowed. The frightening thing is that this was happening in the 1960s and 1970s, not the 1860s and 1870s. We will not see this in schools nowadays as the group have their own schools so there is less chance of rescuing these abused children. Jennifer Lawrence exudes wintertime chic in beige scarf and leather gloves as she enjoys NYC stroll with son Cy, one, after Thanksgiving Myleene Klass shares a blended family tribute to herfiancé as she thanks him for 'being the embarrassing dad who cheers the loudest for my children'

In fact, his family were out shopping, but from then on Roger Stott took this temporary absence as a warning from God about what would become of him if he continued along his disobedient path. Dan Walker is seen for the first time after detailing his horror cancer scare as he arrives at Strictly studios to watch BBC show Ashley Benson bundles up her baby bump in cozy sweats as she steps out with her dog on a coffee run... after tying the knot with Brandon DavisPhilip Larkin famously wrote that ‘they f*** you up, your mum and dad’. To this, Alan Bennett later added the coda: ‘But if you are planning on writing, and they haven’t f***ed you up, well, you’ve got nothing to go on, so then they’ve f***ed you up good and proper.’ A writer rehearses her girlhood in a strict religious cult, the Exclusive Brethren, and how that group affected her family life. On the couch: FIVE surprising ways you can use a psychology degree - from clinical and occupational to forensic psychology A "scattering of showers" is also forecast and it will stay cool for July, with an average temperature of 19C. In the Days of Rain is a double memoir: it describes both Rebecca’s own childhood and her father Roger’s life. It is not, though, in any way a misery memoir and that’s what makes it such an attractive and interesting book’ Spectator

Bruce Willis holds on tightly to his daughter Scout's hand as he spends Thanksgiving with his family amid his dementia battle Stotts father (far right) at St Ives in 1956. The Days Of Rain is a sometimes uneasy amalgam of Rebecca’s autobiography and her father’s Beyonce's proteges Chloe and Halle Bailey wow in flesh flashing looks at singer's Renaissance concert film premiere in Beverly Hills

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When every thought and impulse is given over to an infallible and omniscient Being, a person cannot develop an inner compass or uncensored emotions – a state that besides being agonising can also be fatal to one’s sense of self. Getting to a place, subsequent to such an immersion, where it is all right not to know, then allowing oneself to be open to whatever emerges next, is, as Stott hints, an undertaking worthy of real devotion. Omid Scobie's book is understood to include of volley of withering criticisms of the Royal Family. Here NATASHA LIVINGSTONE sifts fact from fiction...