Last year, I spent a week in an old lady’s home – it was just a week’s convalescence after a spot of hip surgery, but it gave me a chilling insight into the way many of us spend the last years of our lives. The home was managed to high standards of health and safety, … Continue reading
Paedophile offences – The Church was soft on crime
My mother-in-law had a good friend – a decent Protestant – who began reading about all the scandals rocking the Catholic church throughout the centuries, particularly focusing on the period of the wicked popes. (Alexander VI, Roderigo Borgia, who was poisoned in 1503, lived a famously profligate and licentious life, fathering children and favouring his … Continue reading
Thoughts of a Jewish Buddhist
Golden Hawn, the American comedy star, has recently described herself as “a Jewish Buddhist”. Funnily enough, not long ago I was sent some spiritual thoughts by a Jewish Buddhist, which went as follows: If there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated? Accept misfortune … Continue reading
Permissive parenting – Yes, Please.
It is obvious that people are much more permissive with their children, nowadays, than parents (or teachers, or grandparents, or elders of any kind) used to be. We know this because we see it all around us. And research has now confirmed it. A quarter of adults – according to a recent survey of … Continue reading
The road to women’s liberation – money
I was sorry I had to turn down an invitation from Trinity College Dublin’s eminent College Historical Society to speak on the motion that “This House Believes that the Modern Irish Women Have No Need for a Women’s Movement”. Especially since it included dinner with the Fellows and Scholars, a wondrously glamorous prospect. … Continue reading
The Archbishop is wrong – Christians should be persecuted
The former Archbishop of Canterbury – that is, the leader of Anglicans, world-wide – Lord Carey of Clifton, with six other senior Church of England bishops, has accused Gordon Brown’s government of “persecuting” Christians in Britain today. The main case of contention centres on a “dedicated nurse”, Mrs Shirley Chaplin, who is taking her … Continue reading
Crown and Shamrock
Love and Hate between Ireland and the British Monarchy Continue reading
Crown and Shamrock
In her most recent book, Mary Kenny – drawing on research at the Royal Archives in Windsor as well the Irish archives, and personal reminisce by a number of people – examines the complex and contradictory relationship between Ireland and the Crown. Continue reading
Germany Calling
William Joyce, who came to be immortalised as “Lord Haw-Haw” was born in America of English-Irish parents, grew up in Galway in the West of Ireland, became a fierce British patriot when he came to England and then embraced Nazi Germany in 1939. His sense of national allegiance was a little crazy and mixed-up, to say the least. Continue reading
Germany Calling
A personal biography of Lord Haw-Haw, William Joyce Continue reading
