Culture Articles
The day and the seed of small things
How will it come, the day of small things between the heart-break and herb robert; the rape and the ox-eye daisies?
75 Years of Stories: Caux 1946-2021, by Initiatives of Change Switzerland
This is a remarkable book of personal stories, all of which took place at the Caux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. In 1946 this 500-bed hotel was about to be pulled down. It had been a refugee centre through much of world war two, and was in disrepair. But 100 Swiss who were...
Scree at Pendle Hill
i Metal pins heal warts, ground-to-cloud lightning strikes the summit, nightmares the yellow sun of St. John’s Wort might soothe, arthritic...
Time For Socialism: Dispatches from a world on Fire, 2016-2021, by Thomas Piketty
This book is a call for more socialism. It also presents a case for the redesign of the European Union. Thomas Piketty envisages a large-scale re-distribution of income, using progressive taxation on super-rich corporations and individuals, whose wealth has increased by an astonishing amount since the low tax regimes inaugurated...
Style or Not to Style, That is the Question: A story of the book, by Gaia Vince
This short (ninety-page) book is imaginatively and clearly presented. It tells the story of the printed word, from the earliest of times until the present day. In particular, it tells the story of the printed word in York – and who better to tell the story than Michael Sessions, a director...
Come to good
I will not break a bruised reed. I broke a bruised reed. I did not come to own the world. I tried to own the world. I never blew out a sputtering candle I extinguished the wavering wick.
Nomad Century: How to survive the climate upheaval, by Gaia Vince
This book is subtitled ‘How to survive the climate upheaval’. Given the state of the world my grandson will inherit, I decided to buy it for him as an antidote to the economics he will soon begin studying. I ended up borrowing it myself.
The Meeting
In the soul’s deepest recesses there is a meeting like winds passing and beholding each other in mutual rapture. ‘You are here at last,’ breathes the soul in welcome, ‘you have come’.
Inner Healing, Inner Peace: A Quaker perspective, by John Lampen and Diana Lampen
This is a book full of good things to marvel at, understand and apply. So much of it rings bells after the trauma of the pandemic, and its impact on families and loved ones. The issues of tension and conflict are a focus, but there is also a remarkable section...
What the animals said
Ashamed of cars and war, I went to the place of earth and sat under a ring of damson trees, and asked the damson stone to call the animals round. It took its time, took my hand to feel the twisted trunks, brittle twigs, the age-long infancy of damson, its...