Catholicism
Crisis of faith
England’s churches are in deep trouble
Living history
It has been a while since the BBC really pushed the boat out on the epic history documentary front. Perhaps…
A peephole into Peru
Mario Vargas Llosa likes to counterpoint his darker novels with rosier themes: after the savagery of The Green House came…
The Catholic crack-up
It’s not just Vatican infighting any more. Pope Francis has a potential schism on his hands
Keeping the faith
There was no shortage of Easter music and talks across the BBC networks with a sunrise service on Radio 4…
A quiet revolution
What I discovered on a silent retreat
Love them or leave them
My father was handed over a shop counter when he was a day old. His aunt had tried to pass…
‘J’adore Michel’
News of Michel Houllebecq’s Soumission caused such a stir that the book was pirated online before publication. David Sexton reports on the latest literary event in France
Beautiful dreamer
Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had…
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
There’s something about Mary
A bogus history book and a new oratorio turn Mary Magdalene into the wife of Jesus and a human rights activist. Damian Thompson feels sorry for the poor woman
The burning issue of the age
Some reviewers are slick and quick. Rapid readers, they remember everything, take no notes, quote at will. I’m the plodding…
Translating Proust wasn’t all
Sam Leith is astonished by how much the multi-talented Charles Scott Moncrieff achieved in his short lifetime
In Fleet Street’s fast lane
In her early days on Fleet Street, Mary Kenny, as she herself admits, was cast as ‘the wild Irish girl’,…
Lords and protectors
There are still some sizeable holes in early modern English history and one of them is what we know —…
Sins of the fathers
I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I admitted something of…
Forgive me, Father
What Catholics really talk about in the confession box
The lure of Europe
A tour of the Continent was a prerequisite for young Jacobean noblemen training for statesmanship — provided they resisted its corrupting influence, says Blair Worden
Father Paolo’s personal peace process
As Syria’s second peace conference looms, and we prepare ourselves for a lot of hot air drifting over from Geneva,…
Self-whipping
Isabel Hardman of this parish explained after last week’s government defeat that a deluded theory among the party leadership had…
No saint
G.K. Chesterton was a great journalist, not an angel
Saints and sinners
There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…
Here comes the God squad
Evangelicals have taken charge in the Vatican and Lambeth Palace
