I’ve always had a fondness for stories that creep in sideways. Not the grand, operatic ones that march on with banners flying, but the sort that slip in under the door, uninvited and half-mistaken for something real. Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen is precisely such a story - a modest tale of supernatural salvation that, with … Continue reading The Ghosts That Britain Needed: A Reflection on Arthur Machen’s The Bowmen
Category: Faith
Stairway to Heaven and the Tunnel of Light: A Reflection on Bosch’s ‘Ascent of the Blessed’
Detail High time I talked about another piece of art. So… I’ve long maintained that heaven, if it exists, is probably not a harp-saturated cloudbank filled with recycled hymn lyrics and relatives you were secretly relieved had passed on. But then I stumbled - quite willingly - into Ascent of the Blessed, one of Bosch’s … Continue reading Stairway to Heaven and the Tunnel of Light: A Reflection on Bosch’s ‘Ascent of the Blessed’
“People Ruin Beautiful Things”: On Gibran, Secrecy, and the Sacred Art of Keeping Quiet
“Travel and tell no one, Live a true love story and tell no one, Live happily and tell no one - People ruin beautiful things.” They say Kahlil Gibran wrote that, and perhaps he did. Then again, the internet says many things: that Einstein married Marilyn Monroe, that Churchill coined every popular meme, and that … Continue reading “People Ruin Beautiful Things”: On Gibran, Secrecy, and the Sacred Art of Keeping Quiet
Langcliffe: A Quiet Benediction in Stone and Fur
Another little jaunt today as I round off my short stay in the Dales. Today we took tea not in the grand halls of empire, nor beneath the cloisters of cloaked abbots, but in the altogether finer establishment of the Langcliffe Village Hall, where the china clinks not in diplomatic negotiation but in defence of … Continue reading Langcliffe: A Quiet Benediction in Stone and Fur
Valmouth: Where Decorum Goes to Die (with a Wink and a Fan)
There are books that whisper. Books that purr. And then there’s Valmouth - a novella that arrives on the literary stage dressed in ostrich feathers and screaming “darling” before it’s even found its seat. If novels were guests at a country house, Valmouth would be the one caught kissing the butler, flirting with the vicar, … Continue reading Valmouth: Where Decorum Goes to Die (with a Wink and a Fan)
Wording 