Our Gloriana

Our Gloriana

“She is past-mistress of nothingness… a conveniently empty vessel into which Helen Mirren can imagine any amount of knowingness and intelligence.” So Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee once described the Queen. If only we “put an end to this royal infantilizing of a nation,” she added, the “sunlight of reform” would come out and Britain could take its place among the world’s republics.

I won’t bother to defend constitutional monarchy, because it’s looking pretty good these days, compared with the alternatives. Who wants to live in a tyrannous monarchy like, say, Sweden or Denmark or Norway when you can enjoy the delights of republics like Venezuela, Cameroon or North Korea?

But Ms. Toynbee put her finger on something.

Read More

Requiem for Diane Louise Stanton (1948-2021)

Requiem for Diane Louise Stanton (1948-2021)

The creation story of the Batwa goes this way:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Later God—Nagasan­—created the people of the earth.

Each tribe came to God and asked for gifts.

One by one God gave to each tribe particular gifts.

To some he gave good land.

To some he gave great rivers.

To some he gave great size and strength.

At the very end of the line, the Batwa people came.

Read More

Rowan Williams speaks at Incarnation

What a privilege to have the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and present Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Dr. Rowan Williams preach for us on Sunday. Bishop Williams sits in the House of Lords as the Right Reverend and Right Honorable the Baron Williams of Oystermouth.

The Last Emperor of China

The Last Emperor of China

The Forbidden City is not a city at all but a palace of the soul.  It comprises a succession of enormous stark granite courtyards each surmounted by a terracotta hall behind which there are ever larger and higher courtyards and a still larger halls.

Read More

Consider the Oyster

Consider the Oyster

It is a quirk of the human mind that some of the things we think are easy to know are hard to know and some of the things we think are hard to know are easy to know.

Consider the oyster.  There is nothing quite like an oyster.  If you like oysters (as I like oysters) there something wonderful about the taste, the ocean smell and slimely descent of an oyster down your gullet.  An oyster calls out to you raw, it calls out to you breaded and fried, it says “eat me in a poboys sandwich with cole slaw.” An oyster is an excellent thing, a happy ornament to God’s creation. We would all be poorer if there were no bivalve molluscs in the world.

Read More

Chronological Snobbery

Chronological Snobbery

Why do people imagine that they know more than the generations that went before them?  Because in an abstract sense it is true.  The best modern libraries are more comprehensive than the best older ones and the content of books has never been more universally or easily accessed.  Humanity allows its children to stand on its shoulders.

But libraries are not individuals and ‘humanity’ is nobody at all. 

Read More

Some Observations on the Daily Offices

Some Observations on the Daily Offices

My talk this afternoon is essentially a plea that Anglicans should have serious second look at the classical offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. Particularly I am going point out that they are not, as is commonly believed, a happy accumulation of liturgical accidents but that they contain a logic invaluable to growing as a Christian in the modern world.

Read More

Remembering George Grant

I could scarcely believe my eyes.  There, in the middle of a cocktail party, in the drawing room of the president of the university, was an indigent:  elderly, stooped, stout, with a dirty beard, long unkempt hair, and a trail of cigarette ash tumbling down his chest and settling momentarily on top of his stomach before cascading to his shoes beneath.  “Tony,” said President Godfrey, dragging me by the elbow in the old man’s direction, “have you met Professor Grant?”

Read More