Animal Stories

Christine Townend is an Australian-born novelist, author and artist. Her first novel, The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else, was published by Macmillan in l975.  Awarded a Literature Board Grant, she travelled to India where she met a spiritual Teacher in Pondicherry.  Since then she has had eight other books published, as well as a biography by journalist John Little (Macmillan 2006). In 1976, Christine founded Animal Liberation in Australia.  In addition to campaigning for the rights of animals, she published three books on the subject:  In Defence of Living Things, A Voice for The Animals, and Pulling the Wool.  In 1990 she retired from Animal Liberation to live and work in Jaipur, India as a volunteer at Help in Suffering animal shelter, along with her husband Jeremy, a lawyer. After a 3-month retreat in Mt. Abu, India, in 2000, Christine wrote a book entitled The Hidden Master, about her interaction with her spiritual Teacher, Vimala Thakar (which has also been published in French).