With Melvyn Bragg and guests. A fabulous conversation. —- See also, Dickens and Thomas Malthus, the father of global population control. Melvyn Bragg and guests (In Our Time, BBC) discuss Charles Dickens’ novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Christmas itself. Ebenezer Scrooge is the… Read More Onwards Towards Dickens and the meanings of ‘A Christmas Carol’.
.. We would do well to be encouraging and training musicians and choirs in local chuchés. Yes, local. People, young and old, by now desire to get away from their TVs and stressful political podcasts and to become a part of something sublimely beautiful for the Lord’s sake. This will be Modern but, as Pope… Read More Why Liturgical Music Should Be Revived Pronto
“When The Waste Land was published in 1922, T.S. Eliot changed the course of literary history. Hailed as the most influential English-language poem of the twentieth century, this masterpiece of modernist poetry was born not only from a shattered world—but from Eliot’s own psychological collapse. In this in-depth lecture, we explore the rich historical, philosophical,… Read More April is the Cruelest Month
For one of the most famous historians in Britain, conquering the past is not enough. This month, alongside co-host Tabitha Syrett, Dominic Sandbrook is launching a new podcast – this time shifting his focus from history to literature. Hear the discussion Note: I may have spoken incorrectly or too soon about Google not allowing us… Read More Historian Dominic Sandbrook on the Decline of Reading
… you are almost certainly a literate person with an interest in history. And this man was a lot more than brilliant and merely batschlit crazy (though he was very likely that, since he certifiably popped most of his buttons between the World Wars of the last century). He was also extremely influential, impacting for… Read More If you know who this is…
And the end of civilisation. Excerpt. James Marriott Sep 19, 2025 What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one. — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death The age of… Read More The dawn of the post-literate society
by Stephen Hand In Evelyn Waugh’s stunning classic, Brideshead Revisited, there is a scene which presses on my mind these days as I ponder so many forces gathering against a Church weakened greatly by the sins of her own children, both clerical and lay. All of us. It is the time when Sebastian, Lord Alex… Read More Lord Marchmain’s Long Hate
By Mike Heuer. UPI. Mon, September 1, 2025 at 3:15 PM EDT. Sept. 1 (UPI) — Pope Leo XIV confirmed his intent to include LGBTQ parishioners within the Catholic Church ahead of their planned Holy Year pilgrimage to Vatican City. The pope met editor and author the Rev. James Martin of New York for 30 minutes… Read More Pope Leo XIV accepts LGBTQ inclusion in Catholic Church. “All Are Welcome.’
Are the hegemonic fields of politics and sex destroying us? “English Literature no longer makes the top ten of A-level subject choices. English departments at universities are regularly closing. Studies show dramatic drops in literacy and reading, particularly amongst teenagers. A book and a discussion. Stefan Collini’s new book explores why such a prestigious academic discipline… Read More English literature’s last stand
By Joseph Pearce | May 29th, 2025 |Categories: Joseph Pearce, The Imaginative Conservative. If pride might be said to be the making of God in our own image, a lesser form of pride is the making of our gods, our idols, into our own image. This latter form of pride, what might be called pride in the lower… Read More Shakespeare: Saint or Sinner?
“There is a very good reason for every Catholic to know the great works of literature—and that is because the great works of literature help us to know ourselves. This is the reason that we should learn the humanities—because the humanities teach us about humanity, both our own humanity and the humanity of our neighbours.… Read More Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know. Joseph Pearce.
By Norman Podhoretz. Sex, drugs, America, the middle class, and “poetry power”: reflections on a literary entanglement of 50 years’ duration. by Norman Podhoretz, 1997. “Allen Ginsberg, Master Poet of Beat Generation, Dies at 70,” proclaimed the headline on the front page of the New York Times for April 6, 1997. Reading it, I was moved more deeply… Read More My War With Allen Ginsberg
Before there was Gloria Steinem or Michel Foucault, there was Dada. And it was deadly serious. Kickoff, Demolition time. “Dada thrives on contradictions. It is creative and destructive. Dada denounces the world and wishes to save it.” So says one narrator of journalist-filmmaker Mick Gold’s Europe After the Rain, a 1978 Arts Council of Great Britain documentary… Read More 1914. Europe After the Rain.
Right-Wing Extremism, Gov’t Report Warns… Feb. 2023. Author Douglas Murray published a scathing review of the British government’s counter-terrorism Prevent program, which has apparently reported that authors like George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis can radicalize readers. In his column, Murray described how Britain’s Prevent program was founded to support counter-terrorism efforts, but has gradually… Read More Reading ‘Lord Of The Rings’ And ‘1984’ Could Lead To…
For years now very many “influencers” (Catholics very much included of course) spend much of their time making and promoting videos to share their points of view, or those of others. The camera is alluring. Many dream of becoming popular, the next Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson. But very few videos are all that memorable;… Read More How to Mark (Read) a Book By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
A fascinating look at the devolution of culture and the arts over time through the lenses and timelines of Beat, Folk, and Rock ‘n Roll. Superseding orthodox Marxism and other political and social movements, theBeat Movement was the ovum of all later decadent movements in both cultures and music . The Encyclopedia Brittanica defined the… Read More Psychedelia, Beat, Folk, Rock’n’roll…and Us
How do we experience life? What is it to be human? How do we see? What is the relationship between reading and history, reading and science, metaphysics…empathy, philosophy, religion and art? …More. — How to Mark a Book by Mortimer Adler — The social disaster: Children who frequently check social media face significant brain changes
18 Nov 2011 The Vatican has reignited the debate over whether playwright William Shakespeare was Catholic by insisting there was ‘little doubt he was’. Historians have been in two minds over Shakespeare’s faith with splits between whether he was a Roman Catholic or a Protestant and the argument has surfaced again with the release of… Read More Vatican: there is ‘little doubt’ William Shakespeare was Catholic
Amy Welborn. When Andre Dubus passed away in his Haverhill, Massachusetts home February 25, [1999] obituaries noted the loss of one of America’s finest writers of the short story and certainly one of the most interesting and inspiring figures on the contemporary literary scene. What the secular newspapers failed to emphasize, however, was Dubus’ faith… Read More Andre Dubus 1936-1999
By Joseph Pearce. As mentioned earlier … I was honoured to be asked to write the introduction to the first Spanish edition of the play, Sir Thomas More, which was authored by Shakespeare in collaboration with several other contemporary playwrights. Querying some of the assertions that I made in that introduction, a Spanish correspondence wrote to… Read More Shakespeare, Thomas More, and Henry VIII
…Staunch liberal, Anti-abortion … and why he so appreciated Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon Nathan Irving Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from The Village Voice, Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato… Read More Why Former Village Voice Leftist & Atheist Writer Nat Hentoff Opposed Abortion
The gifted Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, by any standard, was a most extraordinary person. Donald DeMarcoNational Catholic Register February 23, 2022 Sigrid Undset walked into the manager’s office of the Aschehoug publishing company, one of the largest in Norway, and tossed G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (1925) onto his desk, exclaiming that “this is the… Read More Sigrid Undset — A Catholic Woman for Our Time
