Pilate

Although very little is known for certain about Pontius Pilate, the man who crucified Christ, this has not stopped writers in every age from imagining his life. In this extraordinary book, Ann Wroe recounts the lives of all our Pilates; among them the glittering medieval tyrant, devoted to gambling and getting around the law, and the wriggling modern pragmatist, whose dilemma over Jesus has been described by Tony Blair as ''a timeless parable of political life''. This is also the story of the man Pilate might have been; and the man who mirrors us. Ann Wroe shows how, in his struggles with fate and free will, Pilate''s story has also become the story of ourselves.