Et in arcadia essemus: a visit to Wilton

With both children away on camp, Rachel & I ventured out on rather a road trip from Wiltshire along the South Downs and up. Marvellous. At the start of the week, we had a chance to visit the original Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney’s imagination (see right for poet pic) – Wilton House near Salisbury, home […]
Friday Fun 23: Hobbes knows the answer to the Meaning of Life
It speaks for itself…
The Apples’ Adventure: Another Stop-motion Triumph

This post is not motivated simply by beaming paternal pride – I also got to have a cameo role in Joshua’s latest triumph… albeit as banana. And I got to be musical director. I have to say that I doubt my acting career will ever get much better than this. (And don’t forget, I ‘starred’ […]
The view from Olympian gods

What an extraordinary night. I’ve never been to an athletics event before in my life (not since defying the odds and coming second in the U13 100m at my prep school – nb there were only 3 other runners and only about 4 others in the qualifying age group in the whole school). But this […]
A Renaissance Paradise: The costs and glories of a Wiltshire Arcadia

I have a mild obsession with human attempts to create heaven on earth. Of course, their idealism is infectious: who doesn’t want heaven on earth? But such visions always come with a cost – in whatever society, in whatever generation. But if modernist visions of utopia have been about projecting the dream of the future […]
The dehumanising metrics of modernist ministry 3: The Past

No man is an island entire of itself said the prophetic priest-poet of old. Modernism and its western offspring, individualism, have done their utmost to prove him wrong. In vain. For whether we like it or not, we are all part of one another. And while Donne was clearly speaking of human society, he could equally […]
Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 47 (August 2012)

Sacred Treasure Nick Spencer writes the new Cambridge Paper on The Bible and Politics Catherine Weston has an interesting blog here reflecting on her experiences working across cultures. Threads is a pretty cool initiative by some media folk at EA – definitely worth following