Humpty Dumpty

If g and t is common on the social scene, t and c is equally common when we order goods or benefits on-line. What we imagined to be a...

‘Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated, needs but to be seen.’ So said Alexander Pope. I said to Humpty, who is very...

‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!’ Nobody ever said that about a dog. Odd, isn’t it Almost as odd as the absence of horses from...

Plato refused to allow poets a place in his ideal society. He saw them as ‘liars’. Aristotle differed. He took the view that poets...

‘Your father’s gone,’ my bald headmaster said. So began a poem by Edward Lucie-Smith. The words were spoken to a boy of ten. The poem...

Where might it end? We cannot avoid guesswork if we put ourselves into the conversations taking place at the end of ‘Acts’. What...

We’d all like that – and Paul was no exception. He didn’t enjoy scolding people, Nor did he like people taking advantage of him and...

We all know what a jumbo-jet is. But can we be as confident about, say, a JCB or a bull-dozer? Naming is a tricky business. Sometimes we...

One of my sons had as his godfather a fiery Welsh minister of the Gospel who had studied at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. It was thanks to him...

When English people hear the name Augustine, they may have a vague recollection that a man came to Kent in 597 AD and tidied up the...

A classic car enthusiast with a Haynes manual open in front of him keeps alive the notion of a dedicated owner working on a cherished...

Of the great disturbances that have always threatened mankind three, maybe, are familiar to us: flood, famine and war. At a different...

When we read the Good News Bible – and it has much to commend it – we encounter the fact that the Sermon on the Mount starts with what it...

I remember a girl called Hope. She married a curate whose surname was Hope. So she became Hope Hope. One can only say that worse things...

Mars, Venus, Neptune and Jupiter are part of the kaleidoscope of what was ostensibly the prevailing understanding of deity in the Roman...

A couple of days ago a full-page advertisement caught my eye and introduced me to the National Churches Trust. It invited subscriptions...

We who speak English as our mother language must recognise that we have a privileged position in the world. Because English is the...