Milly-Molly-Mandy meets What Katy Did

Today I’ll share a couple of short passages from books I’ve been reading recently with my children. Both made me laugh, though I guess the context also helps. The first is from Susan M. Coolidge’s What Katy Did: “Imogen was a bright girl naturally, but she had so read so many novels that her brain was

Catholic Herald Obituary of Audrey Donnithorne

My obituary for the wonderful, much missed Audrey Donnithorne can be found here and in the current print edition of the Catholic Herald.

St Elisabeth of the Trinity

The reason I haven’t posted for a while is because I have been reading the work of St Elisabeth of the Trinity and it has had a profound impact on me. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know where to start in writing about this remarkable Carmelite who was a near contemporary of St Therese

Messiaen’s ‘Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum’

I’m on a bit of a roll at the moment with wandering into the room to hear the second half of great pieces of music. Yesterday evening it was Simon Rattle and the CBSO at Aldeburgh in 2011, playing Messiaen’s ‘Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum’.

Ola Gjeilo’s ‘Second Eve’

I walked into the kitchen this morning to hear this beautiful piece of music being sung. But who was the composer?I just couldn’t work it out.

The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

I am currently reading and hugely enjoying Maria Augusta Trapp’s The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. It is difficult to read some of the early sections in particular without thinking about (or humming) The Sound of Music but, as the story progresses, we get a lot that isn’t in the movie. It comes as something of

The Jesuits in China

  The first Jesuit missionaries to China were a really fascinating group and Liam Matthew Brockey’s Journey to the East provides many new insights into their mission. Whereas previous accounts tended to emphasise the Jesuit mission to the imperial court, Brockey conclusively shows that they also made a big impact in the countryside among ordinary folk too.

Catechism of the Seven Sacraments

It doesn’t look much like a traditional catechism, does it? But don’t be fooled. The Sacrament of the Seven Sacraments is a deeply orthodox book that draws on Pope Benedict XVI’s covenant theology and is a direct response to Pope St John Paul II’s call for a New Evangelization. The characters may be made out of

Audrey Donnithorne RIP

Audrey Donnithorne, one of the true greats, died today at the age of 97. When she was two years old, she was kidnapped by bandits along with her parents in Sichuan and promptly disarmed her captors (but, sadly, only metaphorically) by chatting away to them in Chinese. This incident (which ended happily when all the

Simone Lia’s ‘Please God, find me a husband’

Simone Lia’s Please God, find me a husband is a wonderful graphic novel which contains some very funny scenes as Simone seeks God’s will for her life. There are a great couple of pages which describe her not altogether successful attempts to meditate while on retreat, for instance, and a very funny section which describes her attempts

Maud Jepson’s Biological Drawings

The trouble with new books is that they prevent us from us from reading the old ones. That is what Joseph Joubert argued at the turn of the 19th century, and he’s surely right (though you might want to make an exception for my books!). We now need to go out of our way to

St Thérèse of Lisieux and Reception of the Eucharist

I won’t draw any conclusions from the passage that follows but will leave the words of the saint to speak for themselves: “The day after my first Communion was still one of happiness, but overcast with melancholy. Marie had given me such a lovely dress, and I had lots of other presents, but these things

Deep Mapping the Curriculum

Mapping the curriculum, as I discussed in my last post, is a worthy aspiration, but it doesn’t take us far enough. What we really need is a deep map. What is that? you ask. A deep map works with a vertical as well as a horizontal axis. It describes geology as well as surface features.

Mapping the Curriculum

In one of her blog posts, Christine Counsell argued that the curriculum “is at once a thing of beauty and of utility, and both matter. More like the waterways of Venice than a set of roads or paths, it needs specialist maintenance or it won’t take you where you want to go, nor make it

Escape from the Tower of London

I wrote yesterday about Fr John Gerard’s plan to escape from the Tower of London in 1597, a story I must have read as a child, but had then completely forgotten, even though it has everything you could possibly want from a great escape story. Having bribed his guard, so he could gain access to

Pat Reid’s ‘My Favourite Escape Stories’

This was one of my favourite books when I was a child. I have vivid memories of Charles I’s attempted escape from Carisbrooke Castle, Oliver Philpot’s ‘Trojan Horse’ escape from Stalag Luft III and Pierre Mairesse Lebrun’s vaulting of the fence at Colditz. However, I had completely forgotten the first chapter, which is an extract

On Foxgloves and Marauding Strawberries

Heidi, the Prodigal Son, and Patience

The precious book that Heidi receives in Frankfurt contains a story which she returns to time and again: the story of the Prodigal Son. Why should this story, in particular, matter so much to her? On the face of it, the prodigal son’s experience is utterly different from Heidi’s. He turns away from his father:

Long Live the Weeds

“Some people are flower lovers. / I’m a weed lover.” So said Norman Nicholson in his poem ‘Weeds’ and I’m with him: Weeds don’t need planting in well-drained soil; They don’t ask for fertilizer or bits of rag to scare away birds. They come without invitation; And they don’t take the hint when you want

Treezilla

I deliberately don’t often include links on this site because I am very mindful of the fact that “the Net seizes our attention only to scatter it,” as Nicholas Carr puts it in his fascinating book, The Shallows. However, today I’m going to make an exception because I want to mention Treezilla, a project from the