It began, as most life-altering things do, without warning. Mary wasn’t praying for revelation. She wasn’t prepared. She was simply living — and that, it seems, was enough. The angel didn’t descend with thunder or spectacle, but with words. A greeting, strangely formal, and yet weighted with eternity. She was told she was favoured, though … Continue reading When Heaven Knocked Softly: Merry Christmas
Category: history
They Flew: A Short Sermon on the Impossible
It’s one of history’s great absurdities that the Middle Ages believed human beings could fly — and one of modernity’s great dullnesses that we no longer permit them to. Carlos Eire, in his magnificent and quietly mischievous They Flew: A History of the Impossible, takes us by the hand and leads us into a world … Continue reading They Flew: A Short Sermon on the Impossible
The Queen in Two Pieces: Mary I, Embalming, and the Illusion of Dignity
I suppose I should confess at the outset that my interest in Queen Mary I’s embalming didn’t spring from some lofty academic impulse, but from years spent in the trade myself — years of sewing mouths shut, persuading stubborn limbs into positions they hadn’t attempted since the Thatcher era, and discovering that even the most … Continue reading The Queen in Two Pieces: Mary I, Embalming, and the Illusion of Dignity
The Scarlet Letter – Sin, Society, and the Theatre of Virtue
The Scarlet Letter is a work so suffused with moral intensity that even the commas seem to blush. Hawthorne’s Puritan New England is a place where daylight feels like cross-examination, and every whisper sounds like scripture. Sin, here, isn't merely an act — it’s a neighbourhood watch. The story begins, quite literally, with a symbol … Continue reading The Scarlet Letter – Sin, Society, and the Theatre of Virtue
Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Northern pilgrimages — those walks that feel less like a journey to a holy place and more like a negotiation with eternity. Down south, a pilgrimage is a gentle stroll between tea rooms, the sort of thing you might undertake with a guidebook and sensible shoes. Up here, the guidebook will be soaked within a … Continue reading Pilgrimage North: Where the Wind Remembers Your Name
Wording 