Reviews Articles
Alexander von Humboldt
Friends who are concerned about environmental issues, and the impact we humans are having upon our planet, might be interested in a book by Andrea Wulf – The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science.
Being mortal
Anyone who has a parent, or hopefully two, who are, let us say, getting on a bit, or are themselves in their later years, should find Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, written by American doctor Atul Gawande, compulsory reading.
Is anybody there?
There are few writers on religion whose books are guaranteed bestsellers. The former bishop of Edinburgh and head of the Anglican church in Scotland is one of them. From Godless Morality in 1999, through a series culminating in A Little History of Religion, Richard Holloway’s deep affection for religious tradition,...
Lessons from the past
The value of the past to inform, inspire and challenge us today is given a very telling validation in John Lampen’s excellent new book, A Letter from James: Essays in Quaker history.
The life well spoken
When a person you know and respect writes an authentic autobiography, which touches on aspects of your own life journey, almost every page holds some fascination that brings both enjoyment and challenge. This is my experience of Brian Brown’s Born to be Free – The indivisibility of Freedom, subtitled A...
A Christmas Day
To have had one is barrier-leaping, to have had two is beginning to be a custom, but to have had three major musical premieres performed in London’s Royal Festival Hall is surely a rarity to be recognised. Such are the unique gifts of Quaker composer Tony Biggin. Following performances...
Through a glass darkly
In 2015 Derek Guiton published a book entitled A Man that Looks on Glass. It highlighted what he felt was ‘a crisis in British Quakerism’ – a ‘growing secularisation’ within the Religious Society of Friends. There were two movements and they represented competing and ‘incompatible belief systems’. A group of nonthesists were...
Viking economics
The phrase ‘there is no alternative’ came into circulation in the early 1980s. It was used by Margaret Thatcher to justify the economic reforms of her government and enabled acceptance of a ‘new normal’: an economy of cruelty rather than compassion, an economics that ignores the problems and threats of...
Quakernomics
Economics is a ‘closed book’ to me and, at first, I feared that the same might be true of Mike King’s book Quakernomics: An ethical capitalism. But I obtained a copy, enjoyed it, and Sutton Friends later spent a profitable evening studying it. Quakernomics is a catchy and intriguing...
Bad Quaker
‘I’m not proud; I’m a bad Quaker. But I don’t deny it,’ says J Brent Bill. At first I thought: ‘I can relate to this. I’m a bad Quaker.’ From time to time some aggrieved Friend tells me I’m un-Quakerly. So, I guess I must...