John Bunyan was born in 1628, probably in the November of that year, since his baptism followed in that month. His birthplace was the village of Elsow, just outside Bedford. His family was a good example of a thing of which there are many examples, and of which there cannot be too many-- a sort of plebian aristocracy, plain and insignificant in ( Read more... )

The drift away from normative lifelong monogamous marriage seems to be as old as the human race. That seems to me to be what Our Lord meant when He said: "Moses told you so [allowing divorce] because of the hardness of your hearts, but from the beginning it was not so." Jesus had asked "What did Moses teach you [about marriage]?" And he had been ( Read more... )

Mr. Will Crooks, as I know him in his own house at Poplar and in that other House at Westminster, always seems to me to be something far greater than a Labour Member of Parliament. He stands out as the supreme type of the English working classes, who have chosen him as one of their representatives ( Read more... )

When Dickens wanted to write a story, he wrote a short story. There are dozens by his hand, most of which are excellent. However, with the exception of his Christmas stories, they are neglected; and there is a reason for this seeming injustice. If the man had only written Mugsby Junction, The Signalman or, heaven knows, A Christmas Carol, he would ( Read more... )

The facts collected by Mr. Arnold on this point have long wanted a voice. It has long seemed to us that, as a nation, the English are singularly incapable of large, of high, of general views. They are indifferent to pure truth, to la verité vraie. Their views are almost exclusively practical, and it is in the nature of practical views to be narrow ( Read more... )

In the last decade or two, the United Kingdom has produced two tremendous cultural phenomena that have gone around the world: the Harry Potter series and the Wallace and Gromit animated movies. SUBJECT FOR DISCUSSION: Do they have anything in common, and do they have anything in common with other British successes such as the Dr.Who franchise or ( Read more... )

What follows is probably very imprecise. I have not been able to find it on any British news site, but it was reported in different forms by two Italian newspapers. This is my translation of the longer report, from today's La Repubblica.
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One of the more sickening events of the last few days was Candidate Kerry shouting to a mindlessly cheering audience: "I am John Kerry, and I am - reporting - for - DUTY!!" Forget that there are doubts about his supposed heroic record; forget that this Vietnam vet, who is now using his record as an officer to promote himself as a super-patriot to ( Read more... )