Humpty Dumpty

They say that genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. And when we consider major works of genius — say Milton's...

‘I believe in God, not the God of the mystics and the theologians but the God of nature, the great geometrician, the architect of the...

Theologians have one thing in common with magicians, astrologists and conspiracy theorists. They are ‘devoted to maintaining a view of...

A bronze head of that urbane philosophical Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius has been one of the finds in a field in Yorkshire that has...

Only a daring vicar will invite his congregation to sing ‘Onward, Christian soldiers’ nowadays. Why so? It has none of the blood-curdling...

‘It was before the days of patent soaps and washing powders … There were no washing coppers, and the clothes had to be boiled in the big...

Those of us who thought that Chartism was an early 19th century movement for democratic reform involving universal male suffrage and...

‘Humpty, do you know any persons of colour?’ The answer came promptly. ‘All my acquaintances are people of colour – without exception.’...

One word does it. Just one word is enough. But it takes more than an ordinary imagination to select that word and put it to use....

‘Colds are even more common as lockdown eases,’ says a headline. When we snuffle our way through winter, we are suffering from the common...

‘Glory’ is a word that is too good for this world. Like the word ‘nature’, it is a many-layered word, with much depending on the context....

‘I never said it.’ Humpty was red-faced and plainly aggrieved. ‘Said what?’ I asked. ‘That man Lewis Carroll quoted me as saying: “When I...

Geordies have a formidable reputation. On the football-field, in the ship-building yards, in the early history of Christianity in these...

Time was when the baptizing of infants was a hot subject for enthusiastic Christians. It used to fill the letters columns of a church...