Reviews Articles
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...
A negotiator’s toolkit
As floods, droughts and wildfires can neither be ignored nor rationally explained away, government departments – in every country – require ‘concise arguments for urgent climate action’.
Quakers, guns and money
When Quakers talk about their history they tend to focus on the good bits: Quakers against war, against slavery, speaking truth to power. Priya Satia’s book Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution also talks about Quaker history, but in a way which may cause discomfort...
wake
Thirty years ago Gillian Allnutt, the recipient of the 2016 Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, was one of four editors of a controversial anthology: The New British Poetry. Each of the editors began their section with a foreword. Gillian Allnutt, presenting the feminist poets, offered various thoughts, including: ‘Poetry must...