Reviews Articles
The Struggle for a Human Future: 5G, augmented reality and the internet of things, by Jeremy Naydler
One of the many consequences of the pandemic has been that we have become increasingly dependent on technology to connect with one another. I have found my smartphone and Zoom essential. But I have also been aware that this increasing interaction with technology may also impact on our lives in...
The Spymaster of Baghdad, by Margaret Coker
The spymaster of Baghdad is Abu Ali al-Basri, who was the head of counter-terrorism for the national intelligence agency in Iraq. His unit, the Falcons, had a spectacular record of success against Islamic State during the prime ministership of Nouri al-Maliki. Over the course of sixteen months, it stopped thirty...
The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker, and Death: The end of self-improvement, by Joan Tollifson
According to William Hazlitt in his 1827 essay ‘On the feeling of immortality of youth’, ‘No young man believes he shall ever die. Death, old age, are words without a meaning, a dream, a fiction, with which we have nothing to do.’
How You Can Save the Planet, by Hendrikus van Hensbergen
When young I read The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, a visionary work from 1953. This was a decade before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, widely seen as having launched the environmental movement. I remember the exhilaration of reading about this man who quietly and single-handedly reforested his land,...
Epiphanies: Poems of liberation, exile and confinement, by Harvey Gillman
Some readers will know that Harvey Gillman, much-respected author and speaker, has always been a poet.
Dear Life, by Rachel Clarke
This book may change your thinking – it has done mine. It deals with life and death and the journeys of those who are terminally ill. And yet it is about so much more than that. It is joyful, sad, funny, compassionate and above all full of love, celebrating the gift...
The Assault on Truth, by Peter Oborne
When the Truth and Integrity in Public Affairs committee was laid down by Meeting for Sufferings in 2004, it seemed the right decision. Broadly speaking, public affairs were conducted correctly by a civil service dedicated to ‘integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality’, and by politicians who, if they lied to parliament, resigned....
No Visible Injuries, by Sylvia Clare
The longer I live, the less I consider ‘growing up’ limited to childhood. This memoir by Sylvia Clare, of Isle of Wight Meeting, reminds me that the ‘growing up’ of our consciousness continues throughout life. This can happen in unexpected awakenings, when long-buried childhood shock bursts out, or in fond...
Patterns of Russia: History, culture and spaces, by Robin Milner-Gulland
This is another of those ‘personality and place’ books which are now becoming common. In this book, the place is Russia. The country is well known as a place of three cities – Kiev, Moscow and St Petersburg – but its extent is better conveyed by three ports: Archangel, Odessa, and Astrakhan...
The Life That Never Ends by Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies
This is a delightful anthology of Friends’ experiences. For ease of reading, it is arranged under different headings: ‘As Death Approaches’, ‘After Death Communications’, ‘Near Death Experiences’, ‘Animals and Afterlife’, and there are also some miscellaneous experiences.