Bibliography, June 2020

BOTM: J. Pope-Hennessy, The quest for Queen Mary, ed. H. Vickers (2018)

D. Adams, Life, the Universe and everything (1982)
R. Garrett, Too many magicians (1966)
--------, Murder and magic (1979)
--------, Lord Darcy investigates (1981)
J. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959)
L.E. Major, Social mobility and its enemies (2018)
M. Savage, Class in the 21st century (2015)
P. Kidambi, Cricket country (2019)
D. Tossell, Nobody beats us (2009)

It's fashionable to question whether the gatekeepers of the cannon are right. I read a couple of books about class and social mobility that were interesting on this, but frustrating in their studied relativism. However, I find that reviews and analysis are usually entirely right. Case in point: James Pope-Hennessy's biography has long been held as the gold standard for royal biography, and so it is. Judiciously skipping over the familiar bits, but filling out the rich texture of the Protestant German royalty and the routine lives of royalty, minor and major in the period covered. For those of us who are not nineteenth century specialists, I thought it was a fascinating reach back into an era where the last of the daughters-in-law of George III were still alive, and a highly effective run into the reign of the current monarch. Of course, it was also written two or three generations ago, so it has an additional layer of interest. 

However, outstanding though the biography was, the best thing I read were the edited notes, or really the write ups of selected interviews. These are literary pieces - Pope-Hennessy did write them up with an eye to posterity - but convey the immediacy of the interviews and the emerging pattern of the research. He suggested that they would be published 50 years later. At nearly sixty, the revelations themselves are not shocking (who now cares that Queen Mary had an infatuation before George V), but the trenchant commentary and the detail of the individuals is beautifully done. It is highly amusing, brimming with interest, and nice and short (the biography itself weighs in at over 600 pages). Start here.

Bibliography, May 2020

BOTM: V. Moore, How to Drink (2009)*

T. Ashbridge, The greatest knight (2015)

Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's daughter (1924)

S. Hill, Jacob's room is full of books (2017)
N.K. Jemisin, The hundred thousand kingdoms (2010)
N.K. Jemisin, The broken kingdoms  (2010)
N.K. Jemisin, The kingdom of the Gods (2011)
N. Palmer, A cheesemonger's history of the British Isles (2019)

A. Trollope, A. The MacDermotts of Ballycloran (1847)
P.G. Wodehouse, Thank you, Jeeves (1934)

Barely a dud in this whole list. Trollope's debut is weak but the lines of what makes him great are there. I very much struggled to choose a favourite. The non-fiction was better than the fiction, though that's not a reflection on the fiction. I thought Jemisin's first novel sequence was excellent and reading Dunsany was illuminating, if a little wearing.

However, the non-fiction was outstanding. I cried at Ned Palmer's account of the renaissance of British cheese (the last time I did this over a book was reading about the Home Counties' march to save Radio 4 Longwave). In reading Ashbridge's excellent (and close runner up) account of William Marshal, I remembered how absorbing the Angevin kings are. But I loved most of all Victoria Moore's drinking book. I read it at the time, and it seemed pleasant enough, but I dipped into for lockdown and it simply opened up. I learned lots, and not just that Anna and I have different definitions of what 'too strong' means in a cocktail. But I also enjoyed it for the reading alone. It's well paced, nicely informal, and focused on all the right things and the right number of things. In my head, I remembered this as encyclopaedic; it's not at all, and all the better for it. Instead it's highly authored and great fun. And has helped me get rid of my sweet Vermouth that I bought by mistake last year.

Against the heretics (and their enablers)

Preached 4th Sunday of Easter (3rd May ) 2020, St Michael's, Stockwell (remotely)
Video (at 15:00)

Genesis 7
John 10.1-10
Good morning, it’s a great pleasure to speak to you, and this format has the huge advantage that I am not trying to control my children at the same time as give this sermon. On the other hand, it is a sight cruelty to ask me to preach about life, abundantly, as we have in the gospel, at a time when no-one is living life, abundantly.

In fact, by coincidence, yesterday marked forty days of not living it, though some will have had longer. And, much like Noah during his forty days of rain, we have endured forty days of isolation. Unlike Noah, we have access to the shops, in my case the Internet, and – hopefully - not the prospect of 150 more days to go. Noah, on the other hand did not have to, fairly badly, teach my children their maths.

I don’t know when we realised the flood didn’t literally happen, I imagine it was sometime in the nineteenth century. Perhaps doing the maths about the volume of water helped establish that clearly. As it’s a story we know so well though, it is worth thinking again about what it does mean. And listening to whole of Genesis 7 makes it even more obvious: this is about judgement. And it doesn’t get more judgemental than this. Almost all life is blotted out. The survivors number eight people; they alone are righteous. Though right now, I question the reward part of a story that requires you to spend the best part of 200 days with your sons.

Our gospel passage is about judgement too, though the context and the message are very different.

This passage in John follows a section where Jesus heals a blind man, who the Pharisees then question and criticise, saying ‘you were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us.’ And then they drive the blind man out.

Here, Jesus here is attacking them. And one of the great things about this passage is that even Jesus seems to get impatient with his own parables. I am reminded of my second favourite allegory* of the Trinity, which occurs in Gavin and Stacey, where the Welsh vicar attempts to explain the role of the three persons by means of a comparison with sandwiches and fillings. He then shouts furiously at Gavin, the English interloper, who he feels has ruined his metaphor by not understanding the point.

I imagine Jesus here very much like that vicar. Faced with the clear incomprehension of his listeners he tries again, and tries to make it as simple as possible. It’s worth repeating:

I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

This is judgement flipped on its head: it is not the people who are judged and found wanting. They are the ones who did not listen to the false prophets. Nor is it judgement like an inundation or a sifting out of those who have failed, It is a promise: I came that you may have life in abundance. It is hard right now not to think of the sheep as being like us in our current isolation – safe, but hardly living our most fulfilled life. Christ is come to promise something more than the necessity of life: abundance. What is that abundance? It is life with God, in this world and the next. John Chrysostom, the fourth century theologian, when he preached on this exact gospel passage, simply says, what is more than life? it is the Kingdom of Heaven. His commentary on other passages is much longer.

And so to the thieves. Who are they? What are they stealing? In the gospel, they are clearly the Pharisees, but this isn’t just about the false prophets of Israel, or even false prophets generally, though it is about both of them. It’s also about heresy. Talking about heresy is unfashionable, and no-one should be seeking to condemn other Christians over technicalities. But this passage does tell you why it matters: it’s because it’s a waste. There’s no hellfire; no flood; no test to fail. But the nature of our belief matters. That is why we study, and argue, and indeed preach on doctrine – to secure that promise. Heresy takes us away from the gate, away from God, away from abundant life, and robs us of the promise of the Kingdom. Not for nothing do we sing the hymn that ends ‘one church, one faith, one Lord.’

In the Old Testament, the symbol of the promise of God is the rainbow, shown to Noah after the flood subsides. Today, the country is using the same rainbow as a symbol of their hope and their promise of the future – one of a more abundant life than this lockdown. For us today, it is important we remember as Christians that the promise to us is of a more abundant life still, and that Jesus is the gate through which we find it.

* Graham Greene wrote my favourite

Bibliography, April 2020

BOTM: C. de Hamel, Meeting with remarkable manuscripts (2016)

Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (2018)
L. Booth (ed.), Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (2020)
C. Brahms & S.J. Don't Me Disraeli (1941)
F. Craddock, The Lormes of Castle Rising (1975). Yes, that Fanny Craddock. It's mad.

B. Cribbens, Bernard who? (2018)

J. Man, Barbarians at the wall (2019)
A. Nafisi, reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Before running into the sand on my attempt to read Trollope's mediocre debut, I've had an thoroughly enjoyable reading month despite lockdown removing a number of opportunities to actually read. I'm not convinced they were all exceptional quality; BOTM was.

Christopher de Hamel's book is about medieval manuscripts. Obviously, I loved it, but I think almost anyone. It's brilliantly engaging, written as a conversation, not an analytical monograph. And it makes a persuasive case very lightly for the value of what can be found in books objects, rather than just the words that in them (a tendency to which I am guilty of). I read it on kindle, which I slightly regret as the illustrations in the hardback are meant to be excellent, but even without them, I think this was marvellous. I wouldn't go so far as to say this is the first book on the medieval era you should buy - though now I write that sentence, I can't think what that book is - but it's definitely up there.  

Bibliography, March 2020

BOTM: P. Paphides, Broken Greek (2020)

R. Calasso, The ruin of Kasch (1983)
A. Horne, The terrible year: a history of the Paris commune (1971)
J.H.C. King, Blood and Land (2016)
B. Bishop, The big sort (2008)
D. Defoe, Journal of the plague year (1722)

I've read Defoe before - a decade ago. I'd forgotten that, but I'm glad I reread it; a lot is reminiscent of today. It was however heavy going. Not as heavy going as Calasso, which I thought was vastly overrated once it strayed off Talleyrand, and it wasn't great on him either.

My favourite wasn't heavy going at all. Paphides' book is joyful and brilliant. Billed as a memoir, which is is, just about, its quality lies in its saturation with the music of the time (very specifically about 1975-1982) and his writing about that. That writing that is enhanced by the adult critic adding layers to this childhood insight. It has its fair share of actual memory too, with flashes of acute observation about the nature of his family and their experience. It rattles along, and for me at least those two things hugely complement each other. My memories are also fixed by place and sound. It's a book filled with love: for the music (almost all music) and for the people around him and as such an excellent read for right now, but would be anytime. Right now, it also has the added advantage that it has a long playlist, and you can listen to that without leaving your house.

Bibliography, February 2020

BOTM: J. Child, My life in France (2006)

C. Fraser, Prarie Fires: the American dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017)
A. Huxley, Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell (1954, 1956)
U.K. Le Guin, The word for world is forest (1972) 
A. Martin, Night trains (2017)
S. Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (2017)

I. Tree, Wilding (2018)

J. Philips, Saladin (2019)

How did the fashionable 50s and 60s happen? How did intelligent, well established, perceptive people fall for this utter tosh? Reading Huxley's book on hallucinogens I'm reminded of the terrible end of A Dance to the Music of Time. I don't think Powell understood the 1960s, but his final incarnation of Widmerpool is reminiscent of Huxley here. It is dreadful to see the decline. The brilliant satirist of 20s society, trenchant and perceptive critic of the utopian dreams of the 30s, is reduced to writing bunkum.

At the same time as this drivel was being written, Julia Child was in France, learning to cook. Her posthumous account of it is everything Huxley's is not. It is engaging where his was ponderous; self-deprecating rather than infused with his own sense of its significance. And it's undergirded with a fierceness of interest that makes his witterings on the transcendent look absurd. Like her masterpiece, it has dated elements (though far less than Huxley), and is, entirely acknowledged, the product of the particular background of the author. Learning this makes my much beloved Mastering the Art of French cooking even more immediate and engaging. At heart though, it's is a romp through post war Paris and the century of French cooking that preceded it. That's no bad thing.

Children, spend more time with classic French sauces and less time on acid, especially if you're reading about them.

Against Millenarians (and for Charles, King and Martyr)

Preached Candlemas (2nd February) 2020, St Michael's, Stockwell.
Family service

Malachi 3.1-5

Psalm 24.1-10

Hebrews 2.14-18

Luke 2.22-40

Good morning; some short words from me, not least because the children were brilliant and the vicar has stolen all my jokes. I will be brief, though – unlike the vicar – I will be covering Charles King and Martyr properly.

Now, as it’s Candlemas, I’d like to ask how many of you took down your Christmas decorations? 150 years ago, you would definitely have kept them up till now, because the whole time running from Christmas was seen a single season, up to when Jesus was presented in the temple, which we read in the gospel.

And it’s today because 40 days after the birth of a child, according to the Jewish law, mothers come to the temple to be purified. And while Mary is there, we read that she also dedicates her firstborn to God. When we talked about waiting earlier, this is one of the most significant – waiting for a child to be born. It certainly was for me, and I imagine for Mary and Joseph. They, overjoyed, give thanks to God and make sacrifices. But their waiting is nothing compared to that of Symeon and Anna. All we know of them is that they are old, exceptionally old for the time. And they have been waiting and hoping for many years. For them, that waiting has been fulfilled in their lifetimes. They have seen the light come into the world.

I want to remember today the years before. Not about the hope fulfilled in their lifetime, but the uncertainty and the years without it. Because for many, the Hollywood ending does not come in our lifetime. That’s the theme of our reading from Malachi. This is the last book of the Old Testament, written in exile, promising that God will come to bring justice, to purify and to refine. These are hopes you write down when you have nothing, not when you have power.

And so to Charles I, King and Martyr. King of England, pious Christian, crowned on Candlemas 395 years ago, the most powerful man in England. Twenty four years later, stripped of all his power, after a sham trial, he was murdered, at the behest of a dictator, backed by the army (other historical interpretations are available). Why is he a saint? Not because he died, plenty of people get killed, especially by military dictators. But because the church holds that he had been offered peace and to be spared if he abandoned his principles, his church and, in his view – and mine – legitimate government. He didn’t take it. My children tell me that he was the worst king ever and really boring, but it’s certainly the case that his actions shaped the Church of England, and it’s certainly the case that he died, alone; his family fled; his supporters in hiding. All he had left is hope.

What did he hope for? Was it fulfilled? He did not receive anything in his lifetime. They cut his head off. Was it for justice or revenge? He had that I suppose. Eleven years later, his son returned, his killers were punished, and their leader’s dead body dug up and his head displayed on a spike as a warning. I hope my sons are listening.

But I don’t think that is what he hoped for. As Christians, we do not hope for impossible, radical transformation in this world. That is millenarianism. Symeon will probably have read Malachi, but he does not live to see judgement, but a baby. He knows the psalms, but he doesn’t see victory in battle, but the light to the gentiles. Our hope is wider and greater, and more certain, than those stories. It’s right there in our reading from Hebrews: Christ will destroy the one who has power over death. Charles knew that. Among his last words we read: ‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown’. He was aware of his own weakness, the fallibility of the world and the perfection of heaven.

This is not an excuse for not hoping or acting in the world. I preached on that earlier this year and I wouldn’t want you to think I am inconsistent. But it is the knowledge that in the end we rest our hopes, in the words of the BCP, on ‘the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.’ Whatever the wait, whatever the test, whether or not it is shown to you.

I end with those words in Hebrews: because Christ himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

Amen.