Humpty Dumpty

In dear old England the yule log has been recognised as a hearth centre-piece since 1184. As far as most of us are concerned it now...

It’s humiliating when we wake up to the fact that the world has moved on and we are left behind. Once we built the best ships in the...

Tomorrow morning we shall all be up early. Expectations will be fulfilled. Presents, cardboard boxes, wrapping paper will abound....

Childish, maybe but Hardy set me wondering. We all know that lovely poem ‘The Oxen’ in which Thomas Hardy imagines the oxen kneeling on...

Who was Sosthenes? Every reader of the New Testament has come across his name. Many will have hardly noticed it. Sosthenes was clearly a...

Surprisingly, here (1 Corinthians 14.20 REB) is a label we should welcome. Paul is arguing at some length the case for grown-up...

Not only do we have a language of our own. We also have styles of democracy, types of education, choice of games, rules of the road that...

‘On the hunt for a single version of the truth’ was a headline that caught my eye in a recent daily newspaper supplement. It was about...

We have all been captivated by Lorna Doone. We all remember John Ridd. If we go to the village of Malmsmead, we shall see the coat of...

If we believe all that those cunning craftsmen, advertisers, tell us, we may not live for ever but we can perpetuate our youth. With some...

The word ‘pomp’ occurs only once in the New Testament and that comes in Acts 25.23 when it describes Agrippa ‘in full state’ coming to...

Wenceslas (or Vlacas) may have looked out on St Stephen’s day (Boxing Day) but he wasn’t a king and the carol about him was written by...

We all know that John the Baptist had a one-word message: ‘Repent.’ Not quite so well known is the fact that William Drummond (1585-1649)...