Reviews Articles
Brought to book: Kate Macdonald on Elfrida Vipont and The Lark on the Wing
In the 1970s, when I was reading my way through Aberdeen Children’s Library, I discovered an old novel from the late 1940s. It was about a girl who decides she wants to be a singer, and all the characters wete Quakers. I had never heard of Quakers, but I...
Neoliberal Religion: Faith and power in the twenty-first century, by Mathew Guest
As a Quaker pacifist, I’ve been shocked by the militarism of some Anglican spaces and ceremonies. Here in Durham, one sometimes encounters solemn processions inside the cathedral, led not by a bishop with a crook, but by a man carrying a large sword, just like Penny Mordaunt in the...
Cherubims: Poems, by Edward Clarke
If you’ve ever sighed with relief when the children leave Meeting and go their own fidgety, smirking way, then shame on us all. Take a look at what we’re missing. Edward Clarke is happy running the Children’s Meeting, even when the kids are having tantrums, or interrupting...
Double exposure: Jonathan Doering starts a conversation about race
Covid lockdown was a strange time for everyone, but my family and I were lucky. My wife and I had jobs that were manageable from home, our son was well-provided with schoolwork, and we were living in a beautiful part of South Yorkshire. Our living-room window looked out over the...
Is He Out There? Debating The God Delusion, by Paul Laffan
This book is essential reading, but what an awful title! Is He Out There? We Quakers, connoisseurs of interiority (and somewhat scientifically minded too, on a good day), know the answer to that question. But this book is not an exercise in sifting false from true religion. Here, Paul Laffan...
The Good Prison Officer: Inside perspectives, edited by Andi Brierley
This book is written by past prisoners, all of whom are now professional practitioners and educators in the criminal justice field. They draw on lived experience, as well as diverse literature on penal policy, to explore examples of professional practice.
75 Years of Stories: Caux 1946-2021, by Initiatives of Change Switzerland
This is a remarkable book of personal stories, all of which took place at the Caux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. In 1946 this 500-bed hotel was about to be pulled down. It had been a refugee centre through much of world war two, and was in disrepair. But 100 Swiss who were...
Time For Socialism: Dispatches from a world on Fire, 2016-2021, by Thomas Piketty
This book is a call for more socialism. It also presents a case for the redesign of the European Union. Thomas Piketty envisages a large-scale re-distribution of income, using progressive taxation on super-rich corporations and individuals, whose wealth has increased by an astonishing amount since the low tax regimes inaugurated...
Style or Not to Style, That is the Question: A story of the book, by Gaia Vince
This short (ninety-page) book is imaginatively and clearly presented. It tells the story of the printed word, from the earliest of times until the present day. In particular, it tells the story of the printed word in York – and who better to tell the story than Michael Sessions, a director...
Nomad Century: How to survive the climate upheaval, by Gaia Vince
This book is subtitled ‘How to survive the climate upheaval’. Given the state of the world my grandson will inherit, I decided to buy it for him as an antidote to the economics he will soon begin studying. I ended up borrowing it myself.