Culture Articles
Culture and conscience
There was a minor furore last year when the Poetry Book Society, which organises Britain’s most prestigious poetry award, the T S Eliot Prize, lost Arts Council funding and a hedge fund firm called Aurum stepped in to save it. The organisers of the prize were relieved but two...
A Peace of Africa
We have been fed so many ‘disaster Africa’ images that it takes a conscious effort to look further and realize that there are many aspects of life there that are superior to those in the West – such as the way people cooperate to achieve things and families help each other...
Life Lines
Some things in life are just beyond our imagining. What it was like to be faced with the gas chambers and ovens of Buchenwald is, mercifully, not in our own experience and, for most of us, the nightmare belongs to past history. Yet the fact of the Holocaust, and the...
Quilted greetings
From flags to tapestries – fabric has often been used to communicate messages by using words and symbols. This quilt, stitched by British Friends, has been made to send loving greetings to all Quakers attending the World Conference of Friends 2012.
A bird meditation
Why did you come? Why did you come here? I came because nothing is asked of me here, but to just sit. Just sit quietly in silence.
All fall down
In Sally Nicholls’ two previous books (Ways to Live Forever and Season of Secrets) the leading characters faced death, loss and terror. But both books had a lightness of touch that encouraged young readers to enjoy them, with laughter seasoning the serious issues. Her new novel has a different tone.
Policeman, Stoke Newington
Standing close up to a policeman, I can get a free look at his uniform, its unrevealing midnight matt cloth and silvery buttons, its clever gussets, and places for his walkie talkie, yes, his walkie-talkie tucked under his tunic. Serious tailoring.
Deep Field
The first edition of the latest collection by our Friend Philip Gross sold out so fast that there were no copies left for the book launch and the publishers had to organise a hasty reprinting. What was it about a slim volume of modern poetry that, far from intimidating people,...
The Heron
The heron fishes in the tide With cans and crisp bags at his side I watched him fishing in the place where tide and river interface Midst mud and oil and salt and slime Patiently he takes his time
A Quaker at Sea
It is the ‘Great Depression’. Your father’s Scarborough high street business has gone bust. You are fifteen years old and must leave your Quaker school. You are offered an apprenticeship in the merchant navy, although no one in your family has a history of going to sea, and you...