21st Century
Best Pods of 2021
Lockdown has caused the proliferation of podcasts, with every Tom, Dick and Harriet taking to the pod waves. And, slightly awkwardly, I’m no exception. But
30th December 2021
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epistemology
My Ko-fi button
Will you support my work? You can simply BUY me a COFFEE!
20th Century
“O Tempora! O Mores Evangelici!” 9. Believing the propaganda
You will know of Godwin’s law, I’m sure, whereby the longer an internet discussion countinues, “the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” So, I’m afraid, the time has come.
One of the most gripping if chilling works of history that I’ve read is one that I find myself returning to a lot these days, despite the fact that it is well over 10 years since I first encountered it (in early research for Wilderness of Mirrors). Sir Ian Kershaw has spent a lifetime researching 20th Century German history and has brought all kinds of profound insights to the anglophone world (including through his mammoth two-volume biography of Hitler).
14th January 2021
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apologetics
Poetry: Imagination’s Wake Up Call – a conversation
Regulars will know that I’ve been doing increasing amounts with the fair friends of the Rabbit Room in Nashville. So today, a couple more bits
14th November 2020
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abuse
“O Tempora! O Mores Evangelici!” 5. Dishonourable Confidence
This is the 5th post in a short series trying to grapple with today’s sense of malaise in British evangelicalism. We’re all aware of body
29th October 2020
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19th Century
“O Tempora! O Mores Evangelici!” 4. Down A Nietzsche Rabbit-hole
We had a week beside the sea, last week. Nothing quite like the North Sea in October! Blustery Norfolk skies and coastal walks are the
21st October 2020
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BOOKS/WRITING
Echoes from Eternity: 29. Umberto Eco goes travelling
We can’t travel because of the virus. But one day we will… hopefully! So it’s worth gearing ourselves up with practical tips and advice. But
19th May 2020
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apologetics
Echoes from Eternity 10. Introducing Ezekiel Bulver by C. S. Lewis
Today’s reading is neither poetry nor fiction but is prose of a different sort. It is one of C. S. Lewis’s great essays, one which
30th March 2020
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21st Century
Q Marks The Spot – Treasure Map 112 (December 2017)
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
1st December 2017
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20th Century
Tentative Steps towards Civility #4: Being Offended is not (necessarily) the issue
Revolutions invariably eat their children. It’s an almost inevitable fact of history. The expression was coined by a royalist journalist during the French Revolution, Jacques
6th September 2017
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Aldous Huxley
Tentative Steps towards Civility #2: Generosity towards others’ motivations
It is unavoidable. Each of us is motivated by many different desires and concerns: some positive, some negative, some altruistic, some self-oriented or even selfish.
28th July 2017
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20th Century
Beware the conspiracy theorist’s ‘fact’: THE UMBRELLA MAN
This is superb and completely speaks for itself. It subverts the natural, but risky, human desire to connect all the dots on the basis of
19th September 2014
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20th Century
Let the meaning choose the word: Orwell on political language
It has its gainsayers (eg Steven Poole is pretty disparaging, though unfairly in my view) but George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language (the whole
3rd June 2013
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