Piers Paul Read
The Enduring Myths Of Catholic Inequality
Anti-Catholic calumnies remain deeply embedded in our culture. Professor Rodney Stark’s Bearing False Witness hopes to refute them
Father and son: the Herbert Read I knew
A filial memoir of Britain’s apostle of modernism in art
The Servant of the servants of God Departs in Peace
Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation surprised the world, but the elderly pontiff leaves office having accomplished his mission
Bigotry or Dissent?
As dissenters are labelled bigots and homophobes in the same-sex marriage debate; has Britain become too intolerant for free speech?
Faithless Wonder
Meaning only to skim through Alain de Botton’s new book Religion for Atheists (Hamish Hamilton, £18.99) I read every word, engaged by his wit and limpid prose, impressed by the sheer plenitude of facts on display, and finally delighted to find such an effective apologia for religious belief.
Dreyfus and the Birth of Intellectual Protest
Zola inspired other writers and artists to defend the jailed Jewish officer. Yet he himself was not free of the taint of anti-Semitism
A Life Less Ordinary
Book review of G.K. Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker
Ancient and Modern
A.C. Grayling’s not-so-good book just reinforces quite how special are other holy texts
Git Lit, or: Why Old Age is All the Rage
Men are living for longer than ever and their late-life crises provide a rich seam for the novelist to mine
United States: The Path to Rome via San Francisco
‘In the 1950s, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene wrote triumphalist Catholic novels with miracles as part of the story — Brideshead Revisited, The End of the Affair. They were bestsellers. Since Vatican II, however, the tenor of Catholic fiction has been doubt, dissent and disillusion.’
Will the green agenda be killed off by the pandemic?
‘Will the green agenda be killed off by the longer-term coronavirus recovery? Or might the closure of so much business, and the cleaner air that results from planes not flying and factories not working, give us extra years to gain control of our environment?’
Why T.S. Eliot still matters
His contemporaries’ reputations have diminished. But Eliot’s has grown: he is the poet who shows us what can be saved from the ruins
Music’s in the house
Rappers have found a role in lockdown: chronicling coronavirus with topical tunes. Most people, though, are rushing to the safety of the past