In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

Category: history

  • Dame Julian of Norwich

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    Dame Julian of Norwich was an anchoress. She lived in the fourteenth century and wrote “Revelations of Divine Love.” She “good counsel did give” to her visitors, one of whom was Margery Kempe who wrote an autobiography, a rare and perhaps unique thing to do at that time, especially for a woman. Likewise, Dame Julian’s…

  • Just Words

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    Forced to witness and live, day after day, this nation’s fraught and inept and demented progress towards Brexit – the unforgiveable false step, waste and wanton irrelevance of it, the tedium, obsessive delinquency, delusion, shame, the sheer disgraceful wrong and disaster of it – I retreat into words, not just for some slight relief, but…

  • The History of the United Kingdom

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    Click here for a summary of this piece, consisting of just over 700 words. Are You Sitting Comfortably ? The history of the United Kingdom (whose every seam is under terrible stretch and strain just now) continues so fast, so scattered, so hurt, so incoherent, so unguided and ill-advised, that it is hard to keep up,…

  • The Angel Overhead

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      In his grief, he asked the angel hanging overhead, his faceless confessor  : Why, Lord, do sinners’ ways so grossly prosper ? How can you allow the Lie so fatly to preside ? And the angel answered : I invited you to my feast, my laden tables, my radiant halls, and for my reward,…

  • Naming the Beast of the Year

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      This beast has our country’s contours written all over it. It has leapt from out of the ruins of the city, those hollow squares, and from the great labrynth below ground where the thread got tangled, and from the wi-fi and the wires through which we do not speak but intone like digital toys…

  • Message to Andy

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    After the May election, I joined the Labour Party. Since then I have been inundated by messages from an extraordinary number of Labour representatives, each passionately keen to get virtually personal with me. These include each of the present Party Leader candidates, as well as candidates for the Deputy Leader, all of whom, of course,…

  • The Scottish Referendum : odd thoughts

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    The campaign has not just energised Scots and many more – it will surely have embittered many, too. How will Scotland fare once the decision is made and the “sides” stand back from the barricades, the losers looking at the winners in the eye ? Will they help each other put the barricades away ?…