author
W. H. (William Harry) Turton
1856–1938
An English soldier-scholar with unexpectedly wide interests, he wrote on Christian belief, royal genealogy, and marine shells. His life moved from military service in the Royal Engineers to years of scientific and literary work, especially in South Africa and later Devon.
1 Audiobook
The Truth of Christianity Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion
by W. H. (William Harry) Turton
About the author
Born in Peshawar in 1856, William Harry Turton was the son of a British Army officer and was educated at Clifton College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1876, and biographical sources describe him not only as a military officer but also as a careful amateur scholar with lasting interests in religion, genealogy, and natural history.
Turton is remembered by readers for works such as The Truth of Christianity and The Plantagenet Ancestry, but he also built a reputation as a conchologist, studying marine molluscs and publishing on shells from southern Africa and St Helena. Accounts from conchological and scientific societies note that his time in South Africa was especially important for this part of his work.
He died in Devon in 1938. What makes him memorable is the unusual range of his writing: he could turn from Christian apologetics to royal family lines and then to the fine details of shell classification, bringing the same patient, methodical approach to each.