Sometimes a week can leave you feeling drained. The constant bitter and unedifying sniping of the referendum campaign was bad enough, but the horrific hate-filled shootings in Orlando, followed by the senseless murder of Jo Cox MP on Thursday, made everything go still for me. Against the everyday backdrop of football, exams and seemingly unrelenting […]

I don’t remember where I was when the Queen celebrated her 80th birthday – it would doubtless have involved chasing after my four energetic sons, who were then aged from 7 to 13 – but if anyone were to ask me what I was doing during her 90th birthday celebrations, I would probably answer grumpily, […]

This half term I agreed to look after a friend’s puppy while they went on holiday. I didn’t realise that the puppy was not completely housetrained, and unfortunately, anything she had learned was promptly forgotten in the stress of her temporary relocation. Lassie has also developed a tenacious attachment to my shoelaces, clothes, fingers and […]

“I believe we should go to the moon,” stated President Kennedy before Congress on May 25, 1961, fifty-five years ago this week. Since the mid-1950s the world had watched with concern as the USA and the USSR strove to launch the first human into space. Then on April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin stunned the Americans […]

With the notable exception of our curate Liz, few of us at Christ Church have been to Tonga. But famed sailor and explorer Captain James Cook dropped in twice during the 1770s, while Queen Elizabeth II included a visit to Tonga on her coronation tour of the Commonwealth. And the connection between these distant events? […]

May 1993, not so very long ago. Civil war was tearing apart the fringes of Europe, as groups within the republics of former Yugoslavia struggled for primacy and independent territory. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the conflict was complex: Serbs, Croats and Muslim nationalists were fighting each other and among themselves in different areas of the […]

Born on this day in 1830 as the seventh of twelve children of Stephen Stetson in New Jersey, John trained as a hatter with his father until he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in his twenties and advised that he did not have long to live. He promptly decided to stop making hats and explore the […]

Any lover of Shakespeare must have been delighted by the rich celebrations last weekend marking 400 years since his death, with countless performances, exhibitions, films and discussions around the country, especially in Stratford and London. Just six days later it’s the 309th anniversary of the death of another playwright who left his mark here: George […]

“Passport, ticket, money,” I chanted to myself as I made the final preparations for a few days abroad this week. As a foreign resident I have to be very careful about my visa, so every time I travel, I check obsessively that my passport is still valid and that nothing can prevent me from re-entering […]

On Good Friday in 1876, 140 years ago this week, Vincent van Gogh left his family home in the small Dutch village of Etten-Leur near Breda and travelled to England. He was twenty-three years old, and his future was uncertain. He was quite keen on sketching as a hobby, but at this stage he had […]