Reviews Articles
Callings, by Lucy Rushton
At the last Meeting for Sufferings, held in Leeds at the beginning of October, I met my f/Friend Lucy Faulkner Gawlinski. She had recently published a novel, Callings, under her maiden name of Rushton. She gave me a copy as a gift.
What’s Eating the Universe? And other cosmic questions, by Paul Davies
When he was living in Australia, Paul Davies was interviewed by the journal Island (Winter 1992). Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, broadcaster, and best-selling author. In the published conversation, he discussed the philosophical implications of current cosmology. Some of what he said would have encouraged an exponent of the...
The Unexpected Marriage of Mary Bennet by Alison Leonard
It is always fascinating to read fiction by a Quaker author. Even when there isn’t a single Quaker character in the novel, the sensibilities still shine through. Here, Alison Leonard chooses one of the more overlooked members of the Pride and Prejudice Bennet family to build her story around.
Thee Quaker, produced by Georgia Sparling and Jon Watts
I have been enjoying the new(ish) North American Quaker podcast, Thee Quaker, for some months. I found it because I was looking for another podcast about Quakers when the Friend’s own podcast went on (temporary) hiatus, and now I also support it on Patreon (an online membership platform...
Black Mahler: The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor story, by Charles Elford
I was happy at my Anglican primary school in Croydon, though it was the sixties and it was ‘a different time’. We exited assemblies to the accompaniment of regimental marches played on a gramophone, and were expected to learn our letters from a reading-scheme populated entirely by middle-class children, none...
Israelophobia: The newest version of the oldest hatred and what to do about it, by Jake Wallis Simon
Friends may remember an article I wrote just a year ago: ‘Is the Religious Society of Friends antisemitic?’ (30 September 2022). It was based on an analysis of letters and articles in the Friend. It provoked a wide range of responses, not all critical. I haven’t been able to pursue the...
Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig
I have never owned a Barbie. I went into the cinema with roughly the views articulated by politically-savvy teenager Sasha when she first meets Barbie: ‘You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented.’
Out of Excuses: The Loving Earth poetry book, edited by Tracey Martin
This is a unique climate text. A colourful book, the size of a double CD, it is part of the Loving Earth Project, which has been exhibited in the UK, France, Belgium and the US.
A Secular Age (2007), by Charles Taylor, and God’s Funeral (1999), by A N Wilson
There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a meeting between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pierre-Simon Laplace, the astronomer and physicist, in 1802. Napoleon comments that he has heard that Laplace has written ‘a large book on the system of the universe’ without mentioning God at all. Laplace’s cool, perhaps even dismissive,...
The Living Fountain: Remembrances of Quaker Christianity, by Benjamin Wood
Just look at these chapter headings: ‘The Problem of “Thin” Quakerism’, ‘The Romantic Quakerism of Rufus Jones’, ‘The Unquiet Presence of God’, ‘Recovering the Slow Jesus’, ‘Heaven: Walking the Road with Anne Conway’ – goodness! Who’s Anne Conway? I couldn’t wait, and frankly, now I can’t cope. I...