Last week Bev and I went to watch Wall-E, a love story about two robots. Wall-E has been left behind to clean up Earth, which has been abandoned due to all the pollution and rubbish, but then he meets a sleek “female” robot called Eve, who’s a bit like a Mac to his PC. I […]
Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my […]
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world”. What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes – but whom has it saved? There […]
The Curse of the Successful Formula Doctor Who’s twenty-first century regeneration has been refined into a well-tuned formula of adventure and excitement. Series 4 saw the show reach new heights of popularity, with its highest ratings and audience appreciation figures so far. But this successful formula is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. It’s […]
Alexander Solzhenitsyn died at the weekend. I’ve not read much written by him, particularly not his most famous works such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich or The Gulag Archipelago, but I’ve read some of his writings such as his 1970 Nobel Lecture. As well as a brave man who exposed the […]
When someone accused J R R Tolkien of writing escapism, Tolkien apparently replied: “Maybe, but it’s not the escape of a deserter from the front lines, but of a prisoner from a cage.” These two types of escapism are a good description of the two ways that stories can function. Borrowing from Andrew Fellows from […]
It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest given the strongly Christian themes of Harry Potter in general and book seven in particular, but I just saw this article in which J K Rowling talks about the part that Christianity plays in her books, and also talks about her faith and doubts: here.
Dave Bish posts a link to an interesting and thought-provoking article by Jonathan Leeman titled “Individualism’s Not the Problem–Community’s Not the Solution“. I think Leeman does a good job of showing why communitarianism alone is an inadequate solution to individualism: replacing the rebellious individual with a rebellious community doesn’t solve anything. But the article makes […]
Beverley & me at Rich & Becky’s wedding last weekendTo cut a long story short:On Saturday 19th July, around one o’clock in the afternoon, I got down on one knee and asked my wonderful girlfriend Beverley Watling if she wants to marry me. She said yes, so we’re now engaged! To cut a short story […]
