Culture Articles
Quakerism: The basics, by Margery Post Abbott and Carl Abbott
This is a considerable achievement: a book that balances size, scope, readability and rigour to produce something short, yet with a wide range of material. It is also easy to read while retaining accuracy and original sources. Published by Routledge as part of ‘The Basics’ series, it comes into a...
The Scholar at Cuddesdon
I take God out of the dictionary and listen to G-d’s breathlessness. There are claims that God’s vocation is to tell of flittings.
Samplers, Sewing & Simplicity in Quaker Ireland, by Clodagh Grubb
This beautifully illustrated, A4-size book is packed with information. It relates to the story of Ireland, the development of education there, and Irish women’s history, together with expert and comprehensive chapters on clothing and costume, household linen and soft furnishing. But the main focus, and final chapter, is...
Entangled Life by Melvin Sheldrake
In this book Merlin Sheldrake shows a fine writing style, making a complex area not only understandable, but life-changingly fascinating. Entangled Life – to whose, or maybe to which, life does he refer? You may not find many answers, but will almost certainly arrive at some intriguing questions. The book reaches...
Let us Dream: The path to a brighter future, by Francis, the pope
New Year encourages us to speculate on our future. In this book, Francis surveys the crises around us: the pandemic, the climate, and also the longstanding problems of inequality, of war and its casualties (think Yemen). Francis sees these in biblical terms, as a ‘sifting’, a time when our usual...
Wonder
What shall I send them today, I wonder, those faithful inheritors of George Fox standing silent and still on the top of Pendle Hill or up against the wall in Launceston Prison.
Joe Biden: American Dreamer, by Evan Osnos
Joe Biden was born in 1942. Evan Osnos says in this worthy biography that ‘He was a product of the Silent Generation, the cohort of Cautious Americans born between the Great Depression and the end of world war two’. He was true to type. He was to be a cautious politician,...
A Book of Psalms, by Edward Clarke
Do Friends still know the Psalms? They aren’t mentioned in the subject index to Quaker faith & practice. Do we still care about Myles Coverdale’s translations of them in the Book of Common Prayer (transferred wholesale into the King James Bible)? If Quakerism is a flowering from the...
Small Axe, created and directed by Steve McQueen
Artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen has built a career out of truth-telling. Moving from his acclaimed art, which earned him a 1999 Turner Prize, to his celebrated film work, the west London-raised son of Caribbean parents has always been drawn to depicting the truth, the raw truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes...
Circles
We gauge things differently now as we walk down the street: eyeing up personal space. A man whose dreads unfurl, mouths his thanks for the room I make as he legs it past me.