(Warning: spoilers below) “What’s the best love story you’ve ever read?” This was the question interestingly posed on Facebook’s Woman Alive Book Club page. There were a lot of suggestions – Ross and Demelza from Poldark, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Jane Eyre” were obviously high on the...
If your friend came to you and said, “The woman next door is a witch, and her spell is the reason my brother got cancer,” you would not believe him. Would you? We're all civilised nowadays. In 1900, Frank L Baum published a story called “The...
There is a time to be born, and a time to die. There is a time to fall into despair about the state of the nation. But let’s take a break from that. Let’s KEEP CALM AND READ JANE AUSTEN. Jane Austen is a unique author. Consider: She wrote six novels (Pride and...
On Saturday 16th, I attended the Spring Meeting of the Charlotte M Yonge Fellowship in Eastleigh, Hampshire. It was my privilege to give the opening talk, introducing the works of this author to those attending who might not be familiar with her. This is an...
I’ve finally finished reading a box-set SF trilogy given me a while ago by a friend. The Void trilogy by Peter F Hamilton (a British writer apparently of some renown) is really one long story in three volumes, but is part of an overall sequence...
Last Friday, the meeting of the Anglican leaders called by the Archbishop of Canterbury broke up without a formal split in the Communion, and issued a statement. I am intending to post a blog about this, but am still gathering thoughts and information. In the meantime,...
A few days ago, some very depressing news was released to the media. (Some of you may be ahead of me here.) I refer, of course, to George RR Martin’s announcement that the release of the sixth book in his sequence “Song of Ice and...
One or two more ideas… The Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison.(Canongate Classics) Naomi Mitchison was a socialist and feminist, and not a Christian. She wrote historical novels, largely set in the ancient world, of which the most famous is “The Corn King and the Spring...
What books do Christians like? I could recommend some books of prayers, theology, Christian biography and standard Christian fiction, much of which seems to feature bonnet-wearing American women. Except that this would be difficult, because I don’t read much official Christian literature. (My friends are working...