As Pope Benedict announces his retirement, Frank recalls Pius XII (Pontiff from 1939 to 1958), an expert in all matters who felt qualified to lecture TS Eliot on literature... So sudden and unexpected was Pope Benedict's abdication this week that I was caught on the hop and have not had time ... Read More...
Religion
Today's Dabbler letter from America finds the site of America’s first experiment in religious liberty in an unexpected place.. John Pendleton Kennedy’s 1848 novel Rob of the Bowl has all the hallmarks of overwrought Gothic historical fiction. A haunted chapel, mysterious blood stains, an evil pirate named Cocklescraft, the beautiful daughter of an ... Read More...
In the second of our Easter Sunday posts we explore a flower-covered car wreck and a rain-sodden graveyard to consider what Easter has meant to two of our grumpiest poets. I keep returning to the two Thomases - Hardy and R.S. - even though they must be two of the most ... Read More...
In the first of two Easter Sunday posts exploring the festival as seen from diverse viewpoints, Mahlerman looks eastwards. With more than a millennium of Christianity behind them the Russian Easter (Pashka) is the single most important day in the Orthodox calendar. Last year I played with a straight bat at ... Read More...
Continuing our occasional series featuring some of the finest pictures in London's National Gallery, Gaw looks at a crucifixion scene that's unusually troubling even for this genre... The current work-in-progress of Mark Alexander, a painter and friend of The Dabbler, is inspired by Christ Mocked (The Crowning by Thorns) by Hieronymus Bosch. He ... Read More...
An eerily perfect etching casts a chilly spell over Jonathan Law. Winter in the cathedral city – somewhere in the north of England, some time (we might guess) in the earlier 1500s. Gothic structures rise from the earth, rear ponderously skyward, and lose themselves in the glistening, frosty light. Snow on ... Read More...
Rita finds that the vicious polarisation of American politics infects even the season of goodwill... Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, sated with turkey and family togetherness, Americans abandon their homes to participate in an ancient ritual known as Black Friday. It is a bit like Pamplona’s running of the ... Read More...
This week Martpol looks at some musical approaches to religion... It’s been quite a while since I considered spiritual matters on a Sunday. Or perhaps I mean since I made a point of doing so on a Sunday rather than simply, say, slipping into a semi-contemplative blur after a nice roast ... Read More...
My father-in-law is a photographer, and one of the great things about 'have camera, will travel' is that he occasionally gets to go on some fantastic trips. A while ago he was invited to visit the Eastern Orthodox St Catherine's monastery in the Sinai Desert of Egypt by a friend who's ... Read More...
Rita Byrne Tull continues her series of Dabbler letters from America with a look at the thorny issue of Church and State... I could not have chosen a more eventful time for my first visit to America than the summer of 1969. Americans were still reeling from the assassination of Robert ... Read More...
