The Hearth of Mopsus

I’ve just finished reading Richard Davenport-Hines’s 1995 biography of WH Auden. D-H is a wonderfully fluent and involved writer and his b...

Friends of mine live in North Berwick. I was there last week and one evening went out and sat on the beach to watch the sun set. For some st...

The Feast of the Magdalene, July 22 nd , marked the day the congregation of Swanvale Halt church re-took possession of the church ...

Last Friday it was my grandmother’s funeral. She’d only been a few weeks off her 100 th birthday, but a gallstone and the ensuing infection...

A while ago I had reason to look up a prayer to St Michael for protection against evil on behalf of a parishioner. There is quite a well-kno...

'Matilda', wrote Hilaire Belloc, 'told such dreadful lies/It made one gasp and stretch one's eyes'. I shouldn't be s...

Years ago during a particularly abortive holiday with Dr Bones involving a broken thumb and spending far too much of it in the boat moored o...