Culture Articles
The futility of war
On Friday 1 August Sally Beamish’s Violin Concerto, based on the theme of war, is being given a London premiere at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms season. The programme, commemorating 100 years since the outbreak of the first world war, includes William Walton’s Symphony No.1...
The things which kill
When blinded Polyphemus chose a rock To hurl at bold Odysseus in his flight, His weapon was as one from cave-man’s stock; Its simple function: death to expedite!
Fraudcast News
Press corruption is, sadly, a subject we’re now familiar with, from the press’s own coverage of the Leveson Inquiry and, more recently, the trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and others who – in what might become the longest criminal trial in English history – are charged with phone hacking...
Dear George…
The testimony written after his death in 1982 starts: ‘George Gorman was one of the few members of London Yearly Meeting who was known in every Monthly Meeting and possibly in every Preparative Meeting; he was also known to a great many Friends in Yearly Meetings of continental Europe and of...
Oblation
Wrapped in the silent Quaker hour I see behind closed eyes the lattice of a purple honeycomb. I watch the undulating butterfly draw nectar from the open flower whose shy sense shapes the gift of hidden power.
Only a Signal Shown
Garnishing a love story and the lives of the characters within it with some personal experiences, Leela Dutt’s Only a Signal Shown is an enjoyable, emotional journey. This journey starts with a burnt marmalade-basted chicken. Eleanor and Alec share the results of his limited cooking skills and both...
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins is not at all the misanthrope, thinking poisonous thoughts about humanity, which some people suppose. On the contrary; he loved his parents, his boyhood in Africa, Oxford, science, poetry, music and many of his colleagues. He had fond parents. His father, a botanist who had studied at...
Not ideas about the war but the war itself
Dad hated those processions: strangulated distant bugles, rifles butting Whitehall tarmac, doleful incantations from the comfortable clergy resurrecting Albert, Chalky and those other lads who ‘grew not old as we that are left grow old’. And then the trumpet keening like a scrawny seagull over downturned heads and surreptitious coughs.
Antonine Legionary
I marched these hills not long ago, I travelled north in search of foe, Wild blue-faced tribes, encountered there, Barbaric people, caused such scare. We captured some, and sent them home, To slavery, in ancient Rome. Though I am Roman, not myself, A Syrian archer, trained in stealth.
Spring
Winter drags on: Grey day pursued by Grey day. The sun Appears, winks a bleary eye, Surveys his pale cold kingdom And disappears once more Behind the draperies of cloud.