Blogs

I’m not sure who Adam Rutherford is. Professor Hannah Fry has presented a couple of quirky programmes for the BBC. She’s a model scientist and role model for those girls that think science is just for boys. Science matters they tell us. But is also, like everything else, biased. Their Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything is tongue-in-cheek. Because anyone and everyone knows that the complete guide to absolutely everything is on your phone...

A new kind of church is coming. A church that can meet anywhere, homes, cafes, or even surfing together by the sea. A church that has no pastors or preachers. A church that is based on the first churches in the Bible with less emphasis on preaching and a greater sense of the miraculous. The first churches met in people's homes. Acts 2:46,47. They continued daily in the temple and breaking bread from house to house. The first Christians were all...

The story is in the title. A pamphlet printed in her native Gaelic and later in English. From some ‘sketchy notes’ Isabella MacIver Thomas travelled by the SS Clansman from Lewis to Canada, March 1880. Three years after her wedding to join her husband, (and first cousin) James Thomson. Then by the Canadian Pacific Railway out through to America—Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, Minnesota and back again to join him—in Canada at Pembina in the province...

In Britain the government are getting angry with people who use illegal TV firesticks which plug into the back of a TV and give you access to subscription programmes without having to pay. One or two sellers of these sticks have been sent to prison. But the full danger has not been understood. I must warn you very strongly. If you use these devices it will become impossible for broadcasters to make any money from their subscriptions. In 40 years...

Marilyn Shimon recognises that Holocaust literature has become a literary category. It’s one that speaks to many of us, including me. I’m never happier than when I’m reading about someone being miserable. Power corrupts. But as Robert A. Caro in his study of Lyndon B. Johnson shows—it also reveals. We can learn lessons from Holocaust survivors about what it means to be human but treated as sub-human. Everyone has their story. Marilyn Shimon...

Graham Farmelo’s biography of Paul Dirac won the Costa Book Award the year it was published. That was a while ago. I need to do the maths (or arithmetic). Sixteen years ago. You’d need to go back 100 years to inhabit the world of Paul Dirac. Einstein’s special theory of relativity had not yet changed the world. But had changed the way the world was viewed. A Kuhnian revolution in scientific thought. Paul Dirac was a genius whose work Einstein...

James Van Praagh (1998 [2009, 2012]) Talking to Heaven Living with the Dead (Talking to Heaven) (2002), screenwriter John Pielmeier, Director Stephen Gyllenhaal, starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. I watched Living with the Dead while scrolling through Prime. It’s based on James Van Praagh’s best-selling memoir. But, of course, instead of a wee baldy fat guy with pretension of being a screenwriter, Ted Danson (Cheers) plays James Van...

What is a poem? I’m not sure. Although I’ve foolishly claimed to have written poetry. I’m not a poet. Bex Hainsworth is. I’m not sure how to explain that either. Poetry is hard. A poet must make it look easy. All houses are haunted by women . ‘My grandmother’s semi-detached. A familiar echo. Mundane made wonderful. ‘…a congregation of glass paperweights’ The obvious word here is a collection, not ‘congregation’. But they are ‘arranged in...