Principles of enjoying a fulfilled and contented life

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

What it means to be a dad today?

In the midst of the “masculinity crisis”, award-winning historian, Augustine Sedgewick, author of Coffee-land  reveals an ambitious history of masculinity and family, from the Bronze Age to the modern day, in Fatherhood and dares to offer a more caring and affirmative vision of the roles men currently play in society. How successive generations of men have shaped our understanding of what it means to be and have a father, and in turn our ideas of who we are, where we come from and what we are capable of. What is fatherhood, and where did it come from? How has the role … Continue reading What it means to be a dad today?

Combine curiosity, irreverence, power of calmness and warmth to deal with difficult people

Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural economist at the London School of Economics, defines Beliefism as a discrimination against those with different beliefs to us. In today’s civil discourse, one exacerbated by the anger-stoking effects of digital doomscrolling and the perverse incentives the media has constructed for political discourse (Anyone who changes policy in response to criticism, for example, is gleefully reported to have performed a “humiliating U-turn”.) The citizens of the US and UK are becoming more polarised and inclined to avoid altogether those who aren’t their ideological comrades. Do you really avoid people who are strongly against immigration? … Continue reading Combine curiosity, irreverence, power of calmness and warmth to deal with difficult people

Declaration of Intent

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

Portrait of masculinity

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

I don’t think you know what’s coming – ecstatic misery

A story of live and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends Thomas Hart, a journalist on the Essex Chronicle, and Grace Macauley (17),  small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of Maym and who is “by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful , but not hers”. worshipers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small fictional Essex town of Aldleigh.  Thomas who is 50 and writes a column for the newspaper on scientific and astronomical topics, which brings him into connection … Continue reading I don’t think you know what’s coming – ecstatic misery