Reviews Articles
Heaven on Earth
During the 1990s, three Woodbrooke tutors engaged in a sustained and fruitful dialogue based on their respective areas of research and teaching. This resulted, initially, in a course, and subsequently in a book, Heaven on Earth: Quakers and the Second Coming, published in 1998. The book has just been republished to...
Waiting for the last bus
In Richard Holloway’s book A Little History of Religion, in a chapter called ‘Friends’, he calls George Fox ‘one of the most attractive figures in the history of religion’ and concludes by saying that: ‘The Society of Friends may be one of the smallest denominations in the world but...
Glimpses of Eden
Jonathan Tulloch will be known to many, not only for his novels, which have been serialised on BBC Radio 4, but also for the series of gentle, thought-provoking passages he writes regularly in the ‘Nature Notebook’ in The Times and, probably more amongst Catholics, in The Tablet. Glimpses of Eden: Field...
A study of tribunals
Britain was the first country to include the right to claim conscientious objection as a reason for exemption from military service. The Military Service Act of 1916 brought in conscription for the first time in Britain, to make up for the heavy losses of military lives in the first eighteen months...
Poacher’s pilgrimage
Alastair McIntosh, a Scottish Quaker, writer, broadcaster and activist, records, in Poacher’s Pilgrimage, a twelve-day trek from the bottom of the Isle of Harris to the top of Lewis in the Hebrides.
Camel scorpions
Albert Delma’s new work, Camel Scorpions, is a weighty book of almost 600 pages, which rapidly becomes really entertaining, readable and informative. The main character is a country vicar, Martin Kimpton, from Herefordshire, who has developing doubts about the historical authenticity of Jesus. He focuses his attention on the period...
First confession
Chris Patten, perhaps best known as the last British governor of Hong Kong, was also an MP for thirteen years and held ministerial posts under Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Later, he was a commissioner in the EU, chairman of the BBC Trust and chancellor of Oxford University....
Jesus, revolutionary of the poor
In his most recent book, Jesus, Revolutionary of the Poor: Matthew’s Subversive Messiah, Quaker prison chaplain and Bible scholar Mark Bredin presents Friends and the wider Christian church with the uncompromising message of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus, Revolutionary of the Poor reveals a God who identifies with the poor,...
Travels of a TEFL teacher
Pat Stapleton’s name will be familiar to many Friends, as she and her husband were the first representatives at the Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) Brussels office from 1979 to 1983. Her internationalist outlook goes back further in her life, however, and is fully evident in the delightful book Travels...
Moscow diary
The year 1991 was a momentous one in the Soviet Union. It led up to the resignation of president Mikhail Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state. Marjorie Farquharson was an Edinburgh Quaker who set up Amnesty International’s...