Culture Articles
Two views on faith
The case for God: what religion really means by Karen Armstrong. The Bodley Head. ISBN: 978 1 847 92034 8. £20. Reason, Faith and Revolution: reflections on the God debate by Terry Eagleton. Yale University Press. ISBN: 978 030 015179 4. £18.99. As sparks continue to fly between allies and opponents of Richard Dawkins, both sides have taken a hammering in...
The making of modern Britain
Television: The Making of Modern Britain BBC 2. When Victoria died at the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘New Dawn’ thinking was inevitable. Great Britain was about to undergo traumatic changes. One was a shock to the empire, when it took Britain two years to defeat not very many Afrikaners in...
Quaker Theatre Company: ‘Now We Are Sixty’
The Quaker Theatre Company arrived about an hour before the performance as we waited anxiously on a Friday evening at Long Sutton Village Hall in darkest Somerset. Alan, Judy and Katy, held back by traffic en route from their previous performance at Peterborough, soon had the set laid out and...
Gathering - an exhibition of painting and poetry in Lewes
The Hop Gallery in the East Sussex town of Lewes is an ideally light and airy exhibition space for ‘Gathering’, a collaborative venture where the work of three creative Quakers can be seen from 6 to 21 November. The exhibition has been staged by Ann Johnson and developed around twenty-five of her...
Cole Sahib: Quaker educationist
Cole Sahib: The Story of a Multifaith Journey by Owen Cole. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN: 9781845193362. £16.95. ‘This story has three intertwining strands. One is my deep interest in religious education from 1954 onwards… until now; the second is the multifaith journey that I have travelled since about 1968; and the third is...
Quaker thought in poetry
I’m a Quaker and I’m a poet. Both of these aspects of who I am are full-time. They’re not always compatible. There are things I write that I wouldn’t submit to a Quaker publication. There are facets of my Quakerism that don’t go into my...
Quaker thought in literature
Meetings
Talk and tango
Talk Together, a new initiative, met for its inaugural conference this August in Oxford. Aimed at teaching students conflict resolution skills and providing a forum for students from either side of a conflict to come together, I was lucky enough to attend as a ‘neutral’ student. As a group of...
Three special places
Not so far from my home in Stafford are three special places. Special because they give genuine worth and dignity to the lives of particular individuals, and in so doing give meaning to all our lives. Cannock Chase’s German War Cemetery, Commonwealth Cemetery and Katyn Memorial are all to...