Humpty Dumpty

A man and his wife are likely to adopt a similar gait. So are an owner and his or her dog. So are father and son. It is not necessarily a...

Today is U-day. It’s almost as though we are about to learn a new alphabet. Its first letter is U. We awake to a land with a new monarch,...

‘Et le bon Dieu me pardonnera: c’est son mêtier,’ said Catherine the Great. She saw it as her function to be an autocrat. Forgiveness was...

Yeats called it ‘gong-tormented’ and ‘dolphin-torn’. That was the turbulent town of Byzantium in its sea-ward character. Two thousand...

Intruders: they make themselves at home in our dwelling-places, our churches. Many’s the time I have found myself sweeping away their...

Helter-skelter they went, those pesky rats – big ones, small ones, fat ones, lean ones. They all followed the piper. A town that was...

Every building, they say, makes a statement. If that is so, we all have to ask what our parish church is saying. Hopefully it proclaims,...

‘Thousands at his bidding speed … They also serve who only stand and wait.’ There is no doubt that Milton is a master of scale His...

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh went solo and flew the Atlantic in a single-engined monoplane from west to east. In 1895 Joshua Slocum sailed...

When we talk of a town council or a school or a railway we are talking organisation. We have in mind, perhaps a federal state, a...

Birds of a feather flock together, we have been saying since 1545. It’s as true now as it was true then. Trainspotters, football...

The parish system of our Established Church is in a quandary. It is either an essay in sameness or it demonstrates Christian variety. If...

Noah’s name lives on. As long as children enjoy playing with Britain’s farmyard and zoo, that is likely to continue. Noah also makes us...

Adam, who, we are told, gave names to the animals, might have been stretched to identify some of the creatures found in after-Eden....

The biblical documents have their own quota of tricky words. Here are three to mull over: Kabod Clue: Why? Remember they had escaped from...

You can have too much of a good thing, even religion. Large doses of licorice pose dangers. So does rhubarb – or at least the leaves....

There is nothing more intolerable. Oh, perhaps there is one exception: mugging old ladies. With that in mind we can readily accept that...

Only yesterday a visitor touched wood as she talked about her plans. No, she didn’t avoid walking under a ladder. No, she didn’t make a...

Magpie or rainbow? Black and white or Sweet Pea? Pastel or deep-dyed? Sometimes on a Sunday morning it seems that English parish...

‘Chance is the god of all men wh ho follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in.’ George Eliot was perhaps being...