Despite the relative freedom that singleness brought him, John Stott would never have achieved everything he achieved in his 90-year life were it not for one person: Frances Whitehead. Her legacy is truly unique: She was John's secretary for nearly…
Sacred Treasure Only just discovered the Visual Commentary on Scripture this week - WOW! Something that only the internet can make possible! Lots to explore here... Sam Allberry is onto something very important here: why do churches end up with…
Have been dipping into Max Adams equally fascinating and frustrating book The Firebringers - Art, Science and the Struggle for Liberty in nineteenth-century Britain (aka The Prometheans). The cast of heroes, rogues, and geniuses is startling in its breadth and…
Yesterday was an unusual day. Which is, of course, not exactly news. In these turbulent times, each day tends to reveal its strangeness, especially if you read a newspaper. But for me, it marked the end of a decade's invovlement…
A couple of weeks ago, James Cary invited himself for lunch - and then we hooked up online with our old friend Barry Cooper (now living in Florida, for reasons best known to him and his new wife) for a…
Sacred Treasure Former LibDem leader, Tim Farron has been saying some really important things in the last week about the state and nature of western liberalism. Here is his original Theos lecture: What Kind of Liberalism do we want? Then…
I saw this on twitter the other day (@TheWorkshyFop). One of those laugh out loud moments. Comes from the book Watling Street, which I've not read, and this part reflects on the Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman conquest. I remember…
A couple of years ago, I reposted a little thing I had written 5 years before, An Arable Parable. Now that I'm back at my parents' home for a few weeks, I went for a wander in the field last…
An old friend, Ross Hendry, is the chief exec of Spurgeon's Children's Charity, a UK organisation (no, that's not him on the left, that's Spurgeon). The charity was founded by its illustrious namesake, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and continues today to…
This is history writing at its compelling best. Lynne Olson has beavered away to find an original angle on an oft-told story and does it with such force of insight that one's sense of the bigger story is given greater…