Is there anything more British than politely dying of a mysterious illness while sweating profusely and refusing to make a fuss about it. Enter: The Sweating Sickness of 1485 - or as I like to call it, the Tudor’s very own bout of medieval man-flu, except it killed you quicker than a court summons from … Continue reading The Tudors Break a Sweat: My Encounter With the Most Pointless Plague in History
Tag: suffering
Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
Art imitates life, or so I’m told, but in The Good Samaritan by Vincent van Gogh, life doesn’t just inspire the art - it bleeds into it. You can feel the strain in every brushstroke. This isn’t a tranquil tale of neighbourly virtue. This is what compassion looks like after the cameras stop rolling. After … Continue reading Bearing the Broken: Van Gogh’s Good Samaritan and the Art of Endurance
What Remains After Love: A Reflection on The End of the Affair
There are books that don’t so much entertain as they haunt. They don’t ask for your approval, or even your sympathy - they simply step into the quietest room of your mind and sit there, uninvited, until you are forced to acknowledge them. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is one of those … Continue reading What Remains After Love: A Reflection on The End of the Affair
Suffering, Song, and the Sorrows of the Mother of God
The Stabat Mater is not a hymn so much as it’s a wound set to music - a gash in the human heart where grief spills out in metre and Latin vowels. It’s Mary beneath the cross, yes, but it’s also every parent who has ever outlived their child; every person who has stood by … Continue reading Suffering, Song, and the Sorrows of the Mother of God
Bread Upon the Waters
Ecclesiastes 11:1, the art of giving, and the peculiar futility of being alive “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” — Ecclesiastes 11:1 There’s something heartbreakingly hopeful about that line, isn’t there? Something that makes you want to nod sagely, as if you understand it, even though - … Continue reading Bread Upon the Waters
Wording 