Tag: Corner

I WAS sad to learn in the past week that the American poet Luci Shaw had died. It was not surprising news: she was in her late nineties and had been unwell, but it was still a loss. She was a very good poet and a great soul.…

THERE is no feast of Thanksgiving in the British national or church calendars, but it seems to me a good thing for any nation to set aside a day for gratitude, which is, in truth, the root of every other virtue. I am more…

I WRITE this on return from an extraordinary C. S. Lewis conference in Romania. How is it that more than 50 scholars from around the world, and many more students and interested members of the general public, all made the…

AS WE approach the new liturgical year, those of us called to preach through the lectionary will be blowing the dust off our biblical-studies lecture notes and getting our minds, once more, around what is distinctive about…

I STARTED dipping into Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy when I was myself a fairly melancholy teenager. I was reading it because I knew that Keats knew and loved it and drew inspiration and imagery from it, and I was, at that…

WHEN I was a little boy, my mother took me to the London Planetarium. I was mesmerised, utterly enchanted. When the lights went down and the night sky suddenly appeared above us, it was like real magic, completely immersive.…

I WROTE in a previous column (16 May) about how Maggie and I had visited Glastonbury in May, and I reflected a little on all the legends that gathered round that “storied vale”, and contrasted the stillness, beauty, and…

ON A rare afternoon of rest and peace, amid the ill-planned busyness of this North American tour, I went out walking with a couple of friends through lovely woodlands towards the shores of Radnor Lake, in Tennessee. We were…