There are moments in the long and weary life of a civilisation when one can hear not so much the bells of its cathedrals as the creak of its conscience. This week, Canterbury Cathedral - England’s oldest mother-church, cradle of Augustine, beacon of Becket, and bruised survivor of the Reformation - has been newly baptised … Continue reading The Defaced Face of Faith: On the Canterbury Graffiti Scandal
Tag: God
Notes from Underground
There are books that make me think, and there are books that make me squirm. Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground manages both - a confessional so raw it feels like eavesdropping on a man’s nervous breakdown, with philosophy as his chosen weapon. It’s not so much a novel as an exorcism, written in ink and bile. … Continue reading Notes from Underground
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
There are few mirrors in literature as merciless as Stevenson’s, and none quite so fogged by our own breath. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is less a Gothic tale than a confession disguised as one - a dimly lit sermon on the human condition, preached from the pulpit of a London … Continue reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace
There are phrases that ring through history like bells tolling in fog: ‘Et tu, Brute?’, ‘I have a dream,’ ‘Father, forgive them.’ Yesterday another such phrase was spoken - not in marble halls nor on the steps of Washington, but from a widow’s lips at her husband’s memorial service. Erika Kirk stood before the world, … Continue reading ‘I Forgive’: A Widow at the Crossroads of Rage and Grace
The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
“Great Pan is not dead, but sleeping; and the reed shall sound again at the hour of need.” - Adapted from Plutarch It’s a curious feature of English children’s literature that its most enchanting works are often its most subversive. Carroll slipped logic puzzles and ontological riddles into Alice; Tolkien smuggled Catholic theology into hobbit … Continue reading The Forgotten Divinity: On The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Wording 