Culture Articles
The Glorious Journey, by Liam Kelly
I did not have the good fortune to see the film on which this book is based. Its principal characters are Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, then pope, and Jorge Bergoglio, the current pope (then cardinal). It starred Anthony Hopkins as Ratzinger and Jonathan Pryce as Bergoglio.
Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a time of pandemic, by Rachel Clark
This book is about faith. Not faith in God, but faith in medicine, and faith in one’s fellow professionals. ‘You have to promise me something… you’ll make sure you won’t catch it. You, the nurses, all of you here.’ This is from one of two sons watching...
Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm, by Isabella Tree
The Durham Quaker book group turned out to be remarkably well-qualified to discuss Isabella Tree’s 2019 book Wilding, our choice for February 2021. The Quakers and others who attended via Zoom included two professional ecologists, at least four serious walkers, and a couple with an extensive city garden that they are...
How Long, How Long Must We Wait?, by Anne M Jones
Six years ago there was a lot of publicity about ‘The Jungle’ refugee camp near Calais. It was home to over a thousand people, all wanting to come to Britain. Anne Jones worked there for several years and has written-up her absorbing book of reflections in diary format.
Good Ground Beneath My Feet: Poems from Iona, by Martin Hayden
The Quaker poet Martin Hayden won’t mind me saying that he reminds me of the ‘old men’ in TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker’: ‘Old men ought to be explorers | Here or there does not matter | We must be still and still moving | Into another intensity’. He’s on the...
Difficult Questions About Population, by Roger Plenty and other Quakers
Quaker Concern Over Population (QCOP) was formed in 2015 and granted Quaker Recognised Body status in 2018. Its aim is to remind Friends of the danger of population growth and to explore the means by which it can be addressed without coercion. The group hopes to encourage Friends to overcome their reticence...
The Plots Against Hitler, by Danny Orbach
When people learn that Quakers are pacifist, they commonly ask what we would have done about Adolf Hitler, by which they mean, how would we have resisted him? It is instructive therefore, to find out how people living in Hitler’s regime did it. Such a question is given additional...
Animal Prayers, by Randel McCraw Helms
This little book will delight Friends of all stripes and is calculated to appeal especially to those who care about the relationship between humans and other animals. The poems radiate a sense of kinship with other species, along with sorrow for our trespasses against them. Some have an autobiographical flavour,...
Covid Life
The shed of shielding The igloo of isolation The desert of distance The street of space The sea of sorrow The lagoon of loneliness The world of worry The bubble of belonging The hill of hope The field of friendship
The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus a great moral teacher?, by Julian Baggini
I found this a very stimulating book. It asks whether Jesus was ‘a great moral teacher’, as Richard Dawkins has called him, and whether his ethics are still valid for us if we remove all the divine and supernatural elements. You may think this is rather a narrow, even irrelevant,...