Talking Point

Love Your Neighbour THE UNITED KINGDOM is a multicultural nation and Reading and Caversham reflect that. The number of international restaurants in Caversham alone is testament to the mix of ethnicities we can boast locally. […]

Share Nicely! THE SCHOOL YEAR begins and a fresh cohort of 5-year-olds set off in new uniforms. As a proud grandparent, my experience of little ones grappling with basic life skills is recent. Some skills, […]

Finding comfort in troubling times I AM CURRENTLY reading a biography of Pope John Paul the Second by the broadcaster Edward Stourton. The author refers to the historian Dr Francis Fukuyama, who wrote about the […]

Holidays IN THE CURRENT heatwave, my holiday, taken in early May, is a memory. I enjoyed going away and visiting interesting places. Two of them were cathedrals. As we were based in Norfolk, and stayed […]

A Political-Religious Spat and its Solution I CONFESS THAT, as I write this column, I have been ‘enjoying’ the recent spat between the President of the United States and leader of the largest Christian denomination […]

If you were a musical instrument, what instrument would you be? LAST WEEK I went with a friend to a concert at the Hexagon, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing pieces by Rossini, Dvorak and Rachmaninoff. […]

What Happens to God… ON A SUNDAY morning following Worship, in conversation over a cup of coffee, I was asked “What happens to God when the world comes to an end?” When planet Earth was […]

Prayer IT IS WELL-ESTABLISHED that prayer has a profound beneficial impact on many people’s well-being, and particularly their mental health. It goes to the heart of the Christian gospel of good news and is typified […]

Working Together ONE OF MY favourite stories (parables) is the following: One day, in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, the carpenter laid the tools down and went out to have his lunch. No sooner had […]

Church and Politics? IT’S OFTEN SAID that the Church should keep out of politics. But what about the other way round? Perhaps the way we do politics could teach the Church some lessons. In a […]