VILE BODIES IN MY GRANDPARENTS' home village in North Yorkshire there was (and I suspect there still is), laid up in the north aisle of the parish church, a pauper's coffin. 'Coffin' is perhaps too grand a description for a [...]

Vote Grabbing POLITICS are in the air. There is bound to be a General Election soon and everybody is manoeuvring for position. The main parties seem to have woken up to the fact that a significant number of voters have [...]

No Way Jose. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS has crept into that most reliable of "family values" stores, John Lewis. The Nativity sets were a character short. In order to respond to the single parent family ethos and market of New Britain, Joseph [...]

Patrick Reardon reflects on the gospel according to John THE GREEK word anthrakia (cf. the English derivative "anthracite"), meaning a charcoal fire, is found only twice in the New Testament, both times in the Gospel according to St. John. THE [...]

SIR HUMPHREY CLINKER looked out from the window of his Downing Street office on that corner of Horse Guards Parade which had been his view for twenty-five years. His retirement party, though a modest affair at the Athenaeum, had been [...]

An evening in front of the box gave John Hervé something to think about IT HAD BEEN a hard day in the Parish. Browsing through the schedules one programme looked vaguely interesting."Five Steps to tyranny - Why People commit terrible [...]

1901 WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR . . . Two Forward in Faith Churches are celebrating their Centenaries this year in some style: S. Agatha's, Sparkbrook, in Birmingham, begins its celebrations with a S. Agatha's-tide Eucharist at 11.30 am on [...]

Philip Murphy shares a revealing glimpse of baptism, Essex style FOLLOWING the death of Victor Meldrew, it is now left to the Clergy of the Church of England on opening their Diocesan post to exclaim "I don't believe it". I [...]

A moral dilemma in parochial life ONE OF THE MORE entertaining elements of theological training was the moral case seminar, in which a complex moral situation was described, complete with a whole array of extra, often lurid details, to which [...]

Highways and Byways of Hymns On Fings being much the same as what they always used to be SENIOR READERS of this paper and its sister journal 'The Cricketer' will recall a memorable headline in the latter in 1963. WHERE [...]