Tag: christianity

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Can leaders steer the course of history

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American scientist, historian and Pulitzer Prize winner, Jared Diamond poses the big question whether leaders or luck play a greater part in steering the course of history. In Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings, Diamond announces at the start that he will pursue a middle path- more realistic than taking one side, but a warning that what follows will fall short of a resounding theory. Researching the life of one striking individual creates a temptation to attribute more influence to them than is justified. Inspired by the rigour of laboratory scientists using controls, he cites as a natural experiment- thrown up by … Continue reading Can leaders steer the course of history

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Converts interpreted Rome to England

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The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked turn to Rome. In the first half of the century, Catholicism attracted more than half a million converts among them fascinating artists, writers and thinkers, after it became an intellectual and spiritual fashion. These men and women joined the church, and what difference did conversion make to them? Henry Scobie a Catholic policeman in wartime Sierra Leone finds himself mathematical blind, as it would be a mortal sin for him not to go to Mass … Continue reading Converts interpreted Rome to England

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Grace is out making way for rage and fury

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Communion is an intimate account of why Vice President JD Vance strayed from the Christianity of his youth and what led him back to faith. JD Vance was brought up to believe in God. In Hillbilly Elegy, the book that made him famous, he wrote of how, aged six his biological father told him that he had asked God for signs that an adoption was in JD’s interest. “Those signs apparently appeared, and I became the legal son of Bob, a man I’d known for barely a year.” Vance was mostly brought up by his grandmother, “Mamaw”, who felt she … Continue reading Grace is out making way for rage and fury

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Underestimated, overlooked and shrewd

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Beverley, Elise and Margot are repressed housewives of convicted killers. During the sun-drenched summer of 1966, the three women form an unlikely alliance after the discoveries of their husbands’ brutal crimes. With the exes- some of California’s most notorious murders- dad or behind bars, they are attempting to forge a new future for themselves. These women got mad, frustrated with their prisons of domesticity, they busted out to wreak havoc on the men in their lives or anyone who dared to cross them.  After all, a housewife is, at her very core, a woman who has made sacrifices, by putting herself … Continue reading Underestimated, overlooked and shrewd

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Confession was therapy sin was diagnosis

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Historian Peter Jones travels through Europe’s archives and libraries to uncover a lost psychology: a world where confession was therapy, sin was diagnosis, and the Seven Deadly Sins served as a man of the human mind. What can Twelfth-century monk teach us about burnout, envy or despair? From the deserts of Egypt to the Vatican Library, from Dante’s Florence to Catherine of Siena’s cell, Jones introduces the thinkers, mystics and rebels who wrestled with the same questions that preoccupy us now: How to live with our flaws, forgive ourselves, and find meaning amid confusion. Medieval lives and landscapes come vividly … Continue reading Confession was therapy sin was diagnosis

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Bitter challenger for the farmer, moneylender and the pimp

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Although the story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes, Kim Bowes, professor of Ancient History and archaeology at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania, in Surviving Rome, unearths history of ordinary Romans, who worked with their hands and survived through a combination of grit and grinding labour. Bowes focuses on the tenant farmer Epimachus, Faustilla the moneylender, and the pimp Philokies. She reveals how the economic changes of the period created a set of bitter challenges and opportunistic hustles for everyone from farmers and craftspeople to day laborers and slaves. She finds working people producing a … Continue reading Bitter challenger for the farmer, moneylender and the pimp

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Principles of enjoying a fulfilled and contented life

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Charles Handy, a businessman, a writer, a philanthropist and a philosopher, offers wit and words of wisdom from a lifetime’s thinking on management. He did have even a stroke as he approached the age of 90 dimmed his intellectual curiosity or his immense zest for life. The View from Ninety is written from the vantage point of a contemplative old age and drawing on his articles for The Idler, he shares his thoughts on the big questions with which we all grapple. Drawing in part on his own experience, in part on the wisdom of others, he sets out the … Continue reading Principles of enjoying a fulfilled and contented life

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Roman Woman who broke all rules “a living breathing flesh-and-blood”

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Charismatic Fulvia amassed a degree of military and political power that was unprecedented for a woman in Ancient Rome. Married three times to men who moved in powerful circles, including Marc Anthony, Fulvia was not content to play the usual background role that was expected of wife – instead she challenged the Roman patriarchy and sought to increase her influence in the face of determined opposition. Fulvia is a relative of Julius Caesar, Augustus’s mother-in-law, and a love rival to Cleopatra, She was according to Pultarch, “a woman who took no thought for spinning or housekeeping”, and instead became a … Continue reading Roman Woman who broke all rules “a living breathing flesh-and-blood”

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Declaration of Intent

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Canon Andrew White originally qualified as an Operating Department Practitioner,specialising in Anaesthetics, before his ordination. Now Vicar of St George’s inBaghdad, his work there prompted him to write this moving story, acclaimed by Lord Carey of Clifton as an “inspirational read”. In the foreword, Lord Carey cites Andrew as “one of the most remarkable men I have ever encountered …. With a capacity to love, and be loved”. Additionally to providing a preliminary account of his life, leading up to Baghdad, and the deep questions he has had to work through for answers on his chosen stage, Andrew has provided … Continue reading Declaration of Intent

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Portrait of masculinity

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Booker Prize Finalist Hungarian descent, living in Britain, David Szalay, whose All That Man Is, was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker Prize,  now brings Flesh, where 15-year-old István in Hungary, isolated after moving to a new town. His only friend sets him up to lose his virginity, only find himself too awkward with the girl, and both of them then reject him.  Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon become isolated. Under duress, he begins to help his middle-aged married woman neighbour carry her shopping: she is sexual predator who … Continue reading Portrait of masculinity