Culture Articles
Sacred heart
Anyone who has experienced semana santa (holy week) in Spain will appreciate the extraordinarily dramatic way in which the story of the Passion of Christ is depicted in colourful processions through the streets. Dating back to the sixteenth century, they are at there most Catholically extravagant in Andalusia – especially...
Venice: a city marked by genius
Legend has it that saint Mark was once shipwrecked upon an island in the Venetian lagoon. An angel came to him saying: ‘Peace be with thee, O Mark, my evangelist’, whereupon the angel predicted that on this very spot would arise the most beautiful city the world would see. Cynics...
Earth at the Royal Academy
By the time you read this, we shall know what deal, if any, was done at Copenhagen, and what part popular campaigning played in achieving it. But whether art works played any part in influencing either governmental or popular opinion, we may never know. A year ago, reviewing the year...
A Messiah for Quakers
Deborah Warner: an interview
Social by Social
Social by Social by Andy Gibson, Nigel Courtney, Amy Sample Ward, David Wilcox and Clive Holtham. Published online at www.socialbysocial.com. ISBN 978 1 906496 41 8. Free download, or print copy at £9.99 incl. UK postage. Lots of people are nervous of computers and the big web of connections that’s out there....
Letters to my granchildren
Baking Cakes in Kigali
Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin. Atlantic Books (Grove Atlantic Ltd). ISBN 978 1 84354 7471. Paperback: £7.99 ‘Like the Ladies Detective Agency but in Rwanda’, screams the cover of this edition. And the back. The fear with this book is that it only made the shelves because the publishers have decided we...
Holding it together
We are all made of glue by Marina Lewycka. Fig Tree (Penguin Group). ISBN 978 1 905 49022 6. Hardback: £18.99 Georgie Sinclair, the heroine of this delightful novel, edits the trade magazine Adhesives in the Modern World. About as exciting as a history of tractors in Ukrainian, you might think, and yet the fascinating...
Beck & Ball’s The London Friends’ Meetings
From my time on the staff of Friends House Library, I knew William Beck and T Frederick Ball’s 1869 The London Friends’ Meetings as ‘Beck & Ball’, the book to show historians the lie of the land before they explore volumes of minutes and other detailed evidence. Olive Yarrow from...