In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: Europe

  • Might Labour be the Force to Renew UK Politics ?

    Posted:

    Our democratic politics isn’t working and, in my view, its dysfunction is one of the major causes of our present national crisis. In so many ways, our political structures and democratic processes – not just here in the UK, but manifestly in other countries too – are under attack and also in question. We have…

  • Facing West over a Small Field

    Posted:

    Here is a link to a poem about the poet D.J. Enright and his French wife, the artist Madeleine Enright. (See one of her pictures, above). They belonged in worlds quite foreign to me, but in the last few months of their lives, I chanced to be their next-door neighbour. I had moved into a…

  • Anthem for a Lying Toad

    Posted:

    The UK’s Brexit government have been showing us their true mettle in recent weeks. Following their disastrous response to the Covid-19 virus, they are itching to move on to enterprises more to their liking, but equally vulnerable to their incompetence. It has been said that “The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters” (it’s the title…

  • I Send Greetings from this Place

    Posted:

      The place I’m thinking of this evening is called St Aldhelm’s Chapel, pictured above. It is a small and simple Norman structure built right on the edge of a Dorset cliff, facing out over the English Channel and beyond that to Europe. The chapel has no electricity and the interior is dark. It has…

  • The Photograph

    Posted:

    “He first deceased : she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died.”     There they stand, those old antagonists, posing at the head of the high-walled city, that vast coronet of ruin.   Above them, the daily familiar blue glare of God’s regard, far beneath them, their radiant…

  • Cat Vies with Hard Drive for my Soul

    Posted:

    Our race has re-made the world to be a reflection of our own chaotic inner lives and processes. We’ve fashioned our environment in such a way that it has become our self-portrait (if we dare to look). Perhaps we see ourselves for the first time, when we look out on the world we have made.…

  • Where the Hoodlums Are

    Posted:

    The stanza was written and uploaded on the day the UK left the EU, January 31st, 2020. The picture is of a tower built in Victorian times in belated tribute to the great William Tyndale. It stands on the edge of  the Cotswold escarpment, overlooking the Severn estuary. The lovely photograph was taken by Derek…

  • Toad and the Bong

    Posted:

    Some of the more ardent Tory Brexiters seem very exercised that, after all, Big Ben will not be breaking into song when the UK vacates the EU and seeks alternative residence in their delinquent yet decrepit Brexit wonderland. And the lying Mr Toad, our bouncy new Prime Minister, is coming up with ingenious plans to…