Astonishingly (to me at least!), it’s 10 years since I started this blog, just as I was setting off to start at Cardiff University. A lot has changed in that time: both the freshers’ experience, and my life personally… Continue reading
If you’re a bookworm like myself, then books pose two major problems: time and space.
Firstly, finding the time to read all those books that are just waiting for you to immerse yourself in them. And secondly, having the physical space in which to store, display and care for all the books.
There is one obvious solution to this problem, and that’s this… Continue reading
Doctor Who is back! And I’ve reviewed it over at Hodderscape:
Hero or madman? Warrior or healer? Wanderer or planner? Alien or human?
The Doctor is all of these, and each regeneration gives the opportunity to twist the dials, remix the levels of the different elements of his character. David Tennant and Matt Smith shared many common traits (+5 Wacky Hair, +10 Flirtation and +15 Youthfulness), so it comes as a bit of a shock to be confronted with Peter Capaldi (-10 Flirtation, +10 Grey Hairs, +50 Intense Stare). And Deep Breath won’t let us forget it…
Some weekly picks from what I’ve read online recently… Continue reading
I chew through a lot of articles, blogs, videos and the like each week, so I’m planning on picking out some of the most interesting to recommend every so often. Continue reading
My article on Captain America 2, Agents of Shield and the challenges of telling stories in a shared fictional universe is now up on the Hodderscape blog! Beware of spoilers for the film and tv show.
Nick Fury Must Die: Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD vs the Franchise on Hodderscape.
Over the last few months, I’ve started getting involved in Morphe Arts group, especially the writers’ group that meets in the Southbank Centre twice a month. They recently produced the first issue of their literary magazine Margins and I’ve contributed a short story, The Wordless to the website.
Morphe also has monthly meetings covering a range of stuff in the arts generally, and this Monday was a lecture by Edith Reitsma from L’Abri Fellowship. I’ve met and heard talks by Edith several times – she was one of the speakers at the Christian Postgraduate Conference back in 2011 and helped me when I was thinking through a Christian perspective on literature when I visited L’Abri during my degree. Her talks are always warm, engaging and deep.
So I was really excited that she was speaking on “how the imagination engages the heart”. Understanding the imagination better is a fascinating and challenging task, especially for those engaged in creating art. Continue reading
Neil Postman, who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death, might have been grimly amused to see Sir Howard Stringer recommending that BBC News online emulate Buzzfeed.
Now there may be some very general principles that the BBC can learn from about creating engaging, sharable content. But the news should be very different from cat photos and funny lists. For the BBC, not being Buzzfeed is a feature, not a bug. Continue reading
One of life’s great questions is what happens to us when we die? Is there anything beyond this life, or is this all that there is?
All of us must face death – both the deaths of people we know and love, and eventually our own deaths. It is a solemn and serious matter. How can we be prepared for whatever comes next? What comfort is there when loved ones die?
People do not normally come back from the dead, so having any certain answer is very difficult. Some people have near-death experiences, but it isn’t clear whether these are genuine, or simply the strange hallucinations of the brain close to death filtered through a person’s cultural background.
But the astonishing claim of the Bible is that Jesus has indeed died and come back from death – not near-dead or mostly dead, but nailed to a cross by expert Roman executioners all-dead. I won’t go into the arguments here, but there are excellent historical grounds for believing that Jesus rose from the dead. Further, God has revealed to us through the Bible hints and details of what comes next. And the Christian message regarding death is one of comfort and hope. Continue reading
“This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. My treasure lies laid up, somewhere beyond the blue. The saviour beckons me from Heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world any more”
So goes the old song. But is it true? Is the Christian hope simply that we “go to heaven when we die”?
Today is Easter Sunday, and I like to wish people a Happy Resurrection Day. The historical event of Jesus rising from the dead shows us many things. It shows that Jesus is the divine Son of God as he claimed to be. It shows that Jesus’ self-sacrifice for sins on the Cross was accepted by the Father as bringing us forgiveness and reconciliation. But I want to focus on one particular aspect: Jesus resurrection shows us that we too will be raised from death at Christ’s return when he ushers in the New Creation. Continue reading
