Culture Articles
Friends and Comrades: How Quakers helped Russians survive famine and epidemic, by Sergei Nikitin
A century ago, British and US Quakers were amid the turmoil of the revolution in Russia, providing help to starving people. Today there is again strife and war in Europe. Sergei Nikitin’s book, translated by Suzanne Eades-Roberts, comes at a useful time.
The Boy at the Back of the Class, by Onjali Q Rauf
I thought this was a really good book. It made me think a lot about refugees and how badly they are treated here in this country.
Games at dawn
Children are the throats of blackbirds easing laughter out of half-light. Dawn raises curtains and the play begins. Trains emerge from skirting-boards, dinosaurs bark circles on the rug, while an army racks the carpet with its tiny dead.
All Ways Walk Cheerfully, by Peter Schweiger
Life is a patchwork of happenings, some planned for, many disjointed, and countless repetitive. The richer the incidents that make up these happenings, the richer the patchwork, and this book unpacks a fascinating and busy life in a refreshingly honest style – at times planned, at times disjointed, at times repetitive,...
When Autumn comes
I have come to the time When I watch seasons change, Mainly from my window, Nature is framed like some Constable or Turner, Startling, I notice garden choices Some not mine, a year’s growth Will fade, Autumn is here, The full eye blasting colour of the reds Of the...
O may the wealthy consider the poor
He knew the price of things: Rye about five shillings Oatmeal twelve per hundred pound. Mutton from three pence to five Bacon seven to nine. House rent for a poor man to be paid weekly. To be paid weekly. Wood for the fire scarce and dear. Many beasts slain to...
Inside
Once the lock clangs open I dance alone, obscured by billiard table and bookshelf in the sunlight by the bars where an old, stiff cobweb glints like the wire looping high into bright sky outside. At the foot of the fence old litter clings.
Dovetailing: Gathered notes, by Clare Dearnaley
Dovetailing started life as a multi-dimensional exhibition of sculpture, music and film, held in the peaceful surroundings of Farfield Meeting House.
Such a piece of love
On the first real day, right at the beginning, Love smashed into pieces (designed like that, God’s truth: made for it).
Roger Bannister crosses the line
How we cheered in childhood, back when we, in the world, were young; seeing that tall figure stride, steady as a metronome, to achieve the unachievable, and, reaching the end, give us the hopefulness to believe the unbelievable.