GUEST COLUMN
Laurence Coupe
These articles appear in all NATIONAL WORLD newspapers.
29. ‘No kings!’ But what about England?
Date of first publication: 14 November 2025
The recent demonstration against Trump’s authoritarian presidency in the USA had the slogan ‘No thrones, no crowns, no kings!’ Might this one day be repeated here?
With all the uproar caused by the appalling behaviour of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, there has been a good deal of debate about whether our hereditary monarchy should be abolished.
After all, the late queen protected her favourite son from the national outrage. His funding continued to be generous, and he was allowed to keep his title and stay in the luxurious Royal Lodge.
To his credit, King Charles has finally taken the necessary action. Nevertheless, one topic of discussion has been whether Andrew’s behaviour is ‘just a one-off’, or whether there is something wrong with the institution itself.
There is no doubt that the royal family enjoys a lavish lifestyle, and its wealth is almost incalculable – as is the amount of land belonging to it. By what right does one family own so much?
It’s worth noting also that while King Charles and Prince William laudably advocate ecological responsibility, you may wonder about the family’s forms of entertainment. We all recall Prince Andrew (as he was) referring glibly to ‘a straightforward shooting weekend’ in his interview for the Newsnight programme. Besides the sheer cruelty of the ‘sport’, there can be no doubt that it is environmentally damaging.
One argument in favour of the monarchy is that it gives us a sense of continuity, security and even spiritual meaning. After all, we are told that the king has a God-given right to his position and power.
Is the monarchy essential to the country’s sense of identity? To gain some historical context, let’s go back to the 17th century.
The 1640s saw what we call ‘the English Civil War’ – more accurately referred to as ‘the English Revolution’. It established the ‘English Republic’, also known as the ‘Commonwealth of England’, which lasted from 1649 to 1660. It began with the execution of Charles I.
One of England’s greatest poets, John Milton, played a key role in that period. In the year of the regicide (1649), he wrote his famous pamphlet, “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates’.
As a devout Christian, Milton drew on Biblical authority for his argument. He denied that Charles I’s power came from God, and affirmed that the English people had every right to overthrow a tyrant. Going further, he sanctioned the execution of the king.
This historical reference dispels the idea that our monarchy is essential for English identity. Nobody, I hope, thinks regicide is needed today, but I do believe that the role of the monarchy requires a radical rethink.
28. How we in England can make sense of the crazy world of Trump
Date of first publication: 23 October 2025
In my last column I discussed narcissism. Now I turn to the most outrageous narcissist of our age.
He’s in the White House for a long while yet, and we have no control over his conduct. So how do we get through it all?
- Don’t expect too much from the Gaza peace deal – for which, typically, Trump expected a Nobel prize. He only brokered it by falling for the lies of a war criminal (Netanyahu). Trump’s interest, of course, is in Gaza as prime real estate.
- Don’t torment yourself with speculations about whether he will ever be brought to justice for ‘Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanours’, as in the American constitution. After all, he once famously declared: ‘I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.’
- Whenever you come across television extracts from any of his public performances, don’t look at the MAGA crowds with contempt. They have put their trust in him, and it’s not fair to blame them. The fact that he is only interested in boosting the income of billionaires and couldn’t care less about the working class should make one sympathise with those duped followers.
- Don’t dwell on the fact that the likelihood of the Democratic Party defeating Trump in the 2024 election was squandered by President Biden’s insistence on standing, despite his evident mental deterioration. What’s done is done. Let’s look forward to when an impressive Democrat candidate takes over.
- Do face the fact that Trump is ignorant about fossil fuels and climate change, but let that prompt you to do your best for the environment.
- Don’t be surprised when Trump orders National Guard troops to states which he falsely claims to be overwhelmed by violence. Note that these states are almost always Democrat-governed. Ponder the irony of his incitement to riot on 6th January 2021.
- Do watch Senator Bernie Sanders on YouTube. Where Trump’s speeches ramble, and are full of claims of his own genius, Sanders addresses the concerns of working people and those who are most vulnerable. Clearly and cogently, he presents all the facts, giving you hope for democracy.
- Do take heart from recent polls of swing states, which suggest that Trump’s popularity in the USA might be waning.
- Do take heart also from the recent ‘No Kings’ protest marches, attended by over 7 million citizens: https://www.nokings.org/
- If all else fails, do smile at Trump’s sheer vanity. Note the elaborate procedure he must go through each morning to produce the most elaborate comb-over known to humankind.
27. ‘It’s all about me’: we are living in the ultimate ‘culture of narcissism’
Date of first publication: 14 October 2025
The term ‘narcissism’ refers to people who are self-obsessed and incapable of acknowledging the needs of other people. It is known in psychiatric circles as a personality disorder. The term derives from the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with the reflection of his own image.
A long while ago, Christopher Lasch wrote a book called THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM. That was 1979, and it has always struck me that he was reacting against what came to be called ‘The Me Decade’, when the communal initiatives of the 1960s were replaced by an obsession with self and a constant urge to articulate one’s emotional needs, often at the expense of those of other people. Self-absorption supplanted social responsibility.
If the 1970s was a self-absorbed decade, what about the 2020s? Well, the obvious factor is the widespread use of electronic devices, which more and more people are allowing to take over their lives.
On a typical train journey, nearly all the passengers have their heads bowed, absorbed in the images and ideas they find on their mobile phones. No one talks to anyone else. All that matters is their attempt to find identity in social media and their thirst for validation via ‘likes’.
The word ‘social’ is really quite ironic, as ‘social networking’ increasingly isolates individuals in a constant pursuit of a personality more exciting than the one that they’ve managed to develop. And much of it is focused on physical appearance, hence the proliferation of ‘selfies’.
This daily habit is by no means harmless. Consider the video games that more and more young people are participating in. These trap the consumer in a constant and futile quest for fulfilment. Real life may seem dreary and depressing, offering no chance for self-expression. But in the game they are victorious – often via violence. Alarmingly there are cases where the violence has been acted out in real life.
Finally, let us not overlook the fact that some of our world leaders seem to exemplify narcissistic traits: grandiosity, lack of empathy and an insistence on total control.
I will leave you with the report that, in a ‘hot mic’ moment, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were overheard talking to each other about the possibility of their own immortality, thanks to innovations in biotechnology. Surely this is evidence that they have not accepted their humanity, and that their mindset is ultimately narcissistic?
26.Religion or mythology: do we have to choose?
Date of first publication: 3 October 2025
I’ve become aware lately of more and more people in the UK choosing to subscribe to myths rather than to religious doctrines.
For instance, with the growth in paganism, the appeal of St George has been less his sanctity than his role as dying and reviving god of vegetation, as featured in what we call ‘fertility myth’. Again, his flag is used by political parties to indicate the rebirth of England.
But do we have to choose between myth and religion? Only if we define ‘myth’ as false belief, when it is more accurately defined as a symbolic story with collective significance.
What about the Bible itself? Are there myths in there? There certainly are, but in theology there has been a trend we call ‘demythologisation’. The idea is that when reading the Bible we must dispense with the story and concentrate on the doctrine.
Really? What’s left of the Bible if we discard the powerful narratives that we find there?
Take the opening book of Genesis. Do we settle for saying simply that God created a good world, but human beings spoilt it by sinning? This would mean ignoring the power of story and symbol at work.
The story of how, having been created to tend the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s authority by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge retains its power. Their subsequent expulsion from the Garden makes vivid sense of our own fallen condition.
In other words, what we have in the opening chapters of Genesis is a variation on what we call ‘creation myth’. Interestingly, other ancient cultures – such as Mesopotamia – produced narratives which have a parallel emphasis on humanity’s fall. There is a common human impulse which we might call ‘nostalgia for paradise’.
One kind of myth that distinguishes Judaeo-Christian religion is what I call the ‘myth of deliverance’. In the Book of Exodus, God’s chosen people escape from slavery in Egypt to discover the ‘promised land’, journeying across the Red Sea and through the wilderness. Christians have a later version of this, narrated in the Book of Revelation: the Messiah triumphs over the Dragon who is Satan and the Beast who is oppressive worldly power. Without this vivid myth there is only a vague promise.
If you are interested in this topic, you might like to read my book Myth (2nd ed), Routledge, 2009.
25.Let’s care for all our fellow-creatures … including hedgehogs
Date of first publication: 16 September 2025
It happened just a few weeks ago. I couldn’t believe it! Having occasionally seen the body of a hedgehog flattened on the road by a speeding car, I’d never expected to see one alive and well these days. But there it was, scurrying across our lawn.
Soon our visitor was returning every evening to partake of the special hedgehog food that my wife had bought. We placed it in a shallow bowl for easy access, with a separate bowl for water.
Why all the fuss? Well, a little research will provide disturbing news. The hedgehog population in the UK has fallen from 30 million in the 1950s to less than a million today. They are such appealing creatures that it is upsetting to ponder those figures.
It’s upsetting also to think that photos of them feature regularly on the greeting cards that we fondly send one another while there is a painful possibility that they might go extinct.
Research online and you’ll soon discover the obvious factors in their decline: the destruction of their habitat; the increase in traffic and the demand for more and more roads; the trend towards intensive farming and the use of pesticides.
Acknowledging all that, we can each make an individual contribution to the welfare of the natural environment by looking no further than our own gardens – if we are fortunate enough to have one. By making these spaces as green, and as hospitable to wildlife as possible, we will not only contribute to a vitally important task, but we will experience a lift in mood from connecting with our roots. Hedgehogs will feel at home …and so will we.
About 45 years ago, when the hedgehog population in the UK was still quite robust, Philip Larkin wrote a poem, ‘The Mower’, about an incident in his garden that had upset him. He had been mowing his lawn, only to discover ‘A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, / Killed. It had been in the long grass.’
He reflects: ‘I had seen it before, and even fed it once. / Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world / Unmendably.’ What moral does he draw? ‘The first day after a death, the new absence / Is always the same; we should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.’
Let’s learn to be kind before another of our fellow creatures goes extinct.
24.Words of wisdom from a writer worth discovering
Date of first publication: 21 July 2025
One of my favourite pastimes is browsing through books of quotations. I suspect I’m not alone in this. If I were to compile my own, someone I’d definitely include would be the 20C American writer Kenneth Burke. He is not very well known in England, but I think that’s a situation worth rectifying.
His Collected Poems volume (long since out of print) contains a great number of what he called ‘flowerishes’ – thoughts that emerge like flowers and grow in the reader’s mind. These are hidden in complex word diagrams that encourage the reader to search and discover. There is no particular order to them. Here I’m cheating by setting them out in a straightforward manner. This is only a sample. See what you think.
#Even humility can go to one’s head.
#This job is so top secret I don’t know what I’m doing.
#When he didn’t fight other people, he fought himself — and boy, could he fight dirty!
#Must it always be wishful thinking? Can’t it sometimes be thoughtful wishing?
#He had learned how to be one of those simple, wholesome people who stay sane by driving other people crazy.
#If you can learn to benefit from adverse criticism, your enemies will work for you without pay.
#To cover their delay, they tell you to hurry.
#Though he despised mankind, he dearly loved an audience.
#When people started agreeing with him he lost all his convictions.
#In a world full of problems, he sat doing puzzles.
#They say alcohol reveals our true selves – but which of our selves is that?
#He felt it was alright to do like the others, if only he did it with a bad conscience.
#Poets with little to say learn to write as though guarding a secret.
#He resolved always to wait two weeks before committing suicide.
#We always avoid being stupid like other people by being stupid in ways of our own.
#They canonize their saints and sanctify their cannon.
#Of all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: ‘I knew him when…’
To end, here’s a quotation from one of the many articles Burke wrote about the environment: ‘Men victimize nature, and in so doing they victimize themselves. This, I fear, is the ultimate impasse.’
For more on this writer, see Laurence Coupe, Kenneth Burke: From Myth to Ecology (Parlor Press).
23.How a song can survive, becoming more relevant than ever
Date of first publication: 3 July 2025
Paul Simon’s album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon was released in May 1973. One song in particular was especially intriguing: ‘American Tune’.
The melody was derived from a medieval hymn, ‘O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded’, which became a favourite of the English emigrants who settled on the west coast of North America in the 17th century.
What had prompted Simon to write the song was his concern about the existing state of American politics. The lyrics express the despair of the growing number of citizens feeling lost and alienated in their own native land.
Simon begins by admitting to having felt ‘confused’, ‘forsaken’ and ‘misused’; and now he feels ‘far away from home’. He goes on: ‘I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered. / I don’t have a friend who feels at ease. / I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered / Or driven to its knees.’ He can only ‘wonder what’s gone wrong’.
But in the depths of the unconscious, he understands fully, as is indicated by the symbolism that comes to him in a dream where he is not only ‘dying’ but also ‘flying’: ‘And high up above, my eyes could clearly see / The Statue of Liberty sailing away to sea.’ All that America stood for – including the welcome it always gave to those seeking refuge – seems to be disappearing.
Lastly we have the image of promises unfulfilled: ‘For we come on the ship they call the Mayflower. / We come on the ship that sailed the moon.’ This may seem a glorious history, but now we are entering ‘the age’s most uncertain hour / And sing an American tune.’
Here is a song prompted specifically by Nixon’s ‘Watergate’ scandal, which involved bugging the Democratic Party’s headquarters. Nixon wisely decided not to run again for president.
But here is a song which also resonates today. Indeed, it seems more relevant than ever, given the crimes and misdemeanours perpetrated by the current president.
As a result of what Donald Trump had done during his first term in office (2017-21), he was faced with four main indictments, involving 78 felony charges in all.
Worst than any of these, though, was his explicit incitement to riot when addressing his followers after the result of the 2020 election had been declared. This resulted in well over 1500 of his followers storming the US Capitol. 140 police officers were injured, and five died in the days following.
With this man back in power, what song could be more relevant today than ‘American Tune’?
22.It’s time to question whether we are a nation of animal lovers
Date of first publication: 24 June 2025
All too often we don’t stop to consider the amount of unnecessary suffering endured by animals. Here in England, we like to think of ourselves as animal lovers, but if we are to believe our great poets we don’t have a good record in this respect.
William Blake in his ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (1803) declares: ‘A robin redbreast in a cage / Puts all heaven in a rage… / A dog starved at his master’s gate / Predicts the ruin of the state.’
This spirit of protest against animal cruelty persisted in Thomas Hardy’s verse. In ‘The Blinded Bird’ (1913), he condemns the then customary practice of blinding caged songbirds with a red-hot needle so that they would continually sing, as they could not tell the difference between day and night.
Ending powerfully, the poem presents the bird as spiritually superior to his captors and torturers, drawing on the language of St Paul’s famous epistle: ‘Who hath charity? This bird. / Who suffereth long and is kind, / Is not provoked, though blind / And alive ensepulchred? / Who hopeth, endureth all things? / Who thinketh no evil, but sings? / Who is divine? This bird.’
More recently, Philip Larkin has reminded us how often animal suffering is caused by sheer thoughtlessness. ‘Take One Home for the Kiddies’ (written 1964) depicts the all too common purchase of family pets without consideration of their needs. ‘On shallow straw, in shadeless glass, / Huddled by empty bowls, they sleep: / No dark, no dam, no earth, no grass — / Mam, get us one of them to keep.’
With a matter-of-factness that only intensifies the cruel offence, he pronounces the inevitable consequence: ‘Living toys are something novel, / But it soon wears off somehow. / Fetch the shoebox, fetch the shovel – / Mam, we’re playing funerals now.’ (Note that they are not even identified by species: they are, after all, only ‘toys’!)
Has animal welfare improved since then? Consider the impact of Covid in 2020-1, when more and more people decided on impulse to buy a dog during the lockdown. Within months, innumerable dogs were being mistreated or abandoned. Since then, the general abuse of animals has only increased. If it were not for the dedication of those running rescue centres or animal charities, we would have little to be proud of.
Readers might also be interested in my discussion of Robert Bresson’s classic film Au Hasard Balthazar, featuring extracts from the film: https://www.popmatters.com/au-hasard-balthazar-robert-bresson
21.Remembering a man who was an inspiring example of Christian faith
Date of first publication: 20 May 2025
This year we have, quite rightly, been celebrating the 80th anniversary of VE Day. The importance of that moment of victory in Europe, when Hitler finally admitted defeat, cannot be overstated. But there is another day in 1945 which is also worth honouring (though not celebrating): the day of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
That may be a name that is not widely known now, but for anyone interested in the connection between Christian faith and political commitment, his life is well worth exploring.
Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian dedicated to ‘the gospel of social justice’, who in 1935 helped found ‘the Confessing Church’, which was opposed to the growing influence of the Nazi party on Christian worship. He strongly believed that no spiritual movement had any justification unless it was dedicated to the welfare of all people, whatever race and whatever status the may have.
By 1938, he was in constant contact with the leaders of the resistance movement and he was working for the secret service. He denounced the increasing oppression of the Jewish population of Germany, and he also dedicated a lot of his energy to helping Jews escape Nazi persecution.
As a theologian, Bonhoeffer was not interested in mystical musings or theological hair-splitting. Instead, he explored the idea of a ‘religionless Christianity’. This involved a focus on the humanity of Jesus, on his identification with the poor and oppressed, and on his commitment to a new kind of community. Along with those, Bonhoeffer emphasised not only Jesus’s healing powers but also his own capacity for suffering – as on the cross.
Bonhoeffer’s written work is full of radical pronouncements. For example: ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.’ Or again: ‘We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.’
Bonhoeffer’s commitment to social justice was strong enough for him to condone the planning of a plot to assassinate Hitler. True, he was not the one who planted the bomb, but it was a remarkable stance for a pastor to adopt.
Eventually his resistance work was discovered, and in 1943 he was arrested and imprisoned. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp, where on April 9, 1945 he underwent death by hanging. Ironically, it was only a month before Hitler admitted defeat.
Bonhoeffer stands as an inspiring example of Christian faith leading to political commitment. Were he alive today, he would no doubt be campaigning against all abuses of power across the globe — including that of Israel.
20.Remembering a spiritual revolutionary who still poses a challenge
Date of first publication: 26 April 2025
Jiddu Krishnamurti, born in India in 1895, was adopted in his youth by the Theosophical Society. Its organisers decided that he was a ‘world teacher’, and declared him head of ‘the Order of the Star in the East’.
In 1929, however, Krishnamurti rejected not only this honour but also the whole idea of a religious organisation. He made this defiant statement: ‘Truth is a pathless land: man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique.’
From then on, he dedicated his life to opening people’s minds to the importance of their own capacity for awareness, for creative intelligence.
He declared that a true sense of the sacred does not come from thought, which is rooted in the past. When we think, we think just as we have always thought.
A true sense of the sacred can arise only in the present; and only in the present can we go beyond the self that we have developed through memory.
Spiritual awakening can only take place when we give our full attention to this very moment. Formal discipline, such as repetition of a prayer or mantra, is of no use.
Far from being a religious authority, Krishnamurti insisted that all he was doing was encouraging people to be free. He was against the whole idea of being a guru because he believed that everyone is capable of discovering the sacred dimension for themselves. To this end, he travelled widely, addressing huge crowds on the subject of spiritual liberation.
The environment was key to his teaching. As he explained, ‘thought has not created nature.’ If we have no relationship with nature – ‘the meadows, the groves, the rivers, all the marvellous earth, the trees and the beauty of the earth’ – then we shall have no meaningful relationship with one another. It is our collective home.
In this spirit, he was responsible for several conservation projects around the world, such as the purchase and care of forests in his native India.
Krishnamurti died in 1986. How do we assess him? There can be no doubt that he was an impressive figure , and that he was right to challenge the way that established religions can become restrictive and oppressive.
Of course, we might doubt whether he himself succeeded in avoiding the role of teacher. But then, we all know that the best teachers are those who encourage their students to find the truth for themselves.
19.Poet’s deep affinity for nature is something we need to recover
Date of first publication: 10 April 2025
In my last article, I featured a poem by Philip Larkin which mourned the pollution and decimation of the English countryside. That was 1972. Today, we know how much worse things are.
Going back, though … A poet whom Larkin admired was Edward Thomas, who wrote in the early 20th century, at a time when it was still possible to celebrate rural life without envisaging the wholesale damage being done to it now.
We need to read his poetry, I think, in order to register what has been lost, why it matters and why we need to recover his deep affinity with nature.
One thing we should know about Thomas is that he wrote much of his work during World War I, and that in July 1915 he enlisted in the army.
When a friend enquired why he was joining up, Thomas picked up a pinch of earth and crumbled it between finger and thumb before letting it fall. ‘Literally, for this.’ He meant, of course, England …the land … the earth.
One of his most famous poems is ‘Adlestrop’ (written January 2015), in which he recalls the moment a train he was on drew up at a quiet country station: ‘… What I saw / Was Adlestrop—only the name / And willows, willow-herb, and grass, / And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, / No whit less still and lonely fair / Than the high cloudlets in the sky. / And for that minute a blackbird sang / Close by, and round him, mistier, / Farther and farther, all the birds / Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.’
The natural world is the overwhelming context for human activity. There is a harmony which surrounds our comings and goings, and we can hear and appreciate it if we stop and listen.
‘The Owl’ (written February 1915) has Thomas walking a great distance and then deciding to stay at a country tavern. ‘Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest / Knowing how hungry, cold and tired was I.’ However, he cannot help but hear in the distance ‘An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry’.
Thus he concludes: ‘And salted was my food, and my repose, / Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice / Speaking for all who lay under the stars, / Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.’
We are all inhabitants of the earth, and are responsible one for another, as the voice of another inhabitant – the owl – reminds us.
Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras in April 1917. He cared so much for the earth of England that he was prepared to die in its defence. Surely it is worth saving from the forces which are currently destroying it?
18.Larkin poem still prompts us to think about our environment
Date of first publication: 3 April 2025
In 1972 the Secretary of State for the Environment commissioned a report entitled How Do You Want To Live? The idea was to test public opinion on ‘the human habitat’.
The poet Philip Larkin was invited to write a prologue in verse. The result was not quite as bland as the government had expected.
The poem was called ‘Going, Going’. The very title indicated where he was heading. We all know the auctioneer’s refrain: ‘Going, going, gone.’
The poem begins: ‘I thought it would last my time – / The sense that, beyond the town, / There would always be fields and farms…’
He had, he tells us, always assumed that even if our towns were ruined – old streets and buildings destroyed, to be replaced by ‘bleak high-risers’ and ‘split level shopping’ – there remained the chance to get away to the open countryside. ‘We can always escape in the car’.
But the escape only confirms his sense of a larger problem: ‘The crowd / Is young in the M1 cafe; / Their kids are screaming for more – / More houses, more parking allowed.’
Essentially, reflects Larkin, the trouble is that we assume the natural world is resilient to our irresponsibility: ‘Things are tougher than we are, just / As earth will always respond / However we mess it about; / Chuck filth in the sea, if you must: / The tides will be clean beyond.’ We are wrong.
That said, he concedes that much of the damage is not deliberate. As he concludes: ‘Most things are never meant. / This won’t be, most likely; but greeds / And garbage are too thick-strewn / To be swept up now, or invent / Excuses that make them all needs. / I just think it will happen, soon.’
So that was the early 1970s. What about the 2020s? There have been many reports on the state of our countryside. A recurrent charge is that the UK’s destruction of the natural environment is one of the worst in the world.
Typical insights are as follows:
The traditional smallholding has almost disappeared, to be replaced by a large-scale agricultural model involving almost universal use of pesticides and ripping up of remaining hedges.
Wild places are disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to the encroachment of major roads, train-lines, housing and general ‘development’.
Plastic pollution is killing a huge variety of marine species, and sewage discharge in rivers is escalating.
There are 73 million fewer birds today than there were in 1970.
Larkin’s challenge rings more true than ever.
17.Dylan’s glorious career has been one of constant reinvention
Date of first publication: 18 February 2025
Suddenly everyone is talking about Bob Dylan … again! The new film, A Complete Unknown, has created interest in his work. But of course, this is true of his whole career: he has been repeatedly ‘rediscovered’ over the decades.
The film addresses the controversy that Dylan caused when, having made his name as a folk singer, performing alone with just his acoustic guitar and harmonica for accompaniment, he decided to explore the possibilities of amplified music. He effectively founded ‘folk rock’.
I was only 16 when I witnessed this transition to electric, attending a concert he gave in Manchester as part of his UK tour in 1966. The first half of his performance having been sung gently in the folk mode, the second half was defiantly loud. Many people in the audience heckled him, culminating in one desperately shouted word: ‘Judas!’ (The film transposes this moment to the Newport Folk Festival a year earlier.)
The members of the audience who were interviewed after that concert were unanimous: in abandoning folk protest music, he was a ‘traitor’ who had ‘sold out’. At this distance in time, it’s hard to understand the strength of feeling. But we have to remember that hitherto Dylan had been famous for composing ‘protest songs’.
That said, even as a protest singer, he had been constantly criticised. It was all very well producing powerful songs about social issues. Why didn’t he engage in political action? Why didn’t he do something, like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez?
The answer is simple. He had clearly done something. He had engaged in what we might call ‘symbolic action’. He had written and performed songs that raised important issues, inspiring listeners to take them seriously and, where possible, campaign for the appropriate causes. He had made people think about civil rights (‘Oxford Town’ and ‘Pawn in Their Game’), poverty (‘Hollis Brown’, ‘North Country Blues’), warfare (‘Masters of War’, ‘With God on Our Side’), and he had even warned of a possible man-made apocalypse (‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’).
So what happened when he went electric? The quality of his music was not lessened; in fact, it was frequently enhanced. Nor was the quality of his lyrics diminished. Listen to ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and ‘Visions of Johanna’.
As for the rest of his career, he has continued to re-invent himself, always capable of surprising us. He puts this well on his last album, with a song title derived from America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman: ‘I Contain Multitudes’. He has, in short, remained unknown.
16.Is God really on Donald Trump’s side?
Date of first publication: 30 January 2025
Not long ago, Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term as Republican president of the USA, four years after the end of his first term. His election had come as a surprise, given that he was a convicted criminal who had been impeached twice.
Present on the podium was the evangelical Christian preacher Franklin Graham Jr, who informed those present that they should ‘look at what God has done’ and rejoice. This was a sentiment echoed by Trump himself. Referring to the assassination attempt that had been made at a rally in Pennsylvania a few months earlier, he dramatically proclaimed: ‘I was saved by God to make America great again’.
He failed to refer to what had also happened at that rally. A volunteer fire-fighter, Corey Comperatore, had been killed shielding his wife and daughter from gunfire, and two other men had been left in a critical condition.
Here we are faced with a quandary. If God had saved Trump’s life, why had he not saved that of the fire-fighter? Does God have a preference for politicians with a criminal record over ordinary citizens trying to protect their families?
The day after his inauguration, Trump issued a pardon for over 1500 rioters whom he had inspired to attack the US Capitol on January 6th 2021 – despite the fact that more than 140 police officers had been injured, and five had died in the days following. All justified, we are to believe?
Another striking pronouncement of Trump’s was his vow to send astronauts to Mars: ‘We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.’ ‘Manifest destiny’ is an American doctrine going back to the mid-19th century, justifying the expansion west by white settlers as a God-given right. It was used to justify the violent appropriation of the land hitherto belonging to the Native Americans. It is striking that Trump should use that phrase even when referring to space travel, surely knowing its resonance all too well.
All this set me thinking about Bob Dylan’s famous song, ‘With God on Our Side’ (1963), in which he catalogues all the wars that the USA has fought so far, including that against the country’s indigenous people: ‘The cavalries charged, / The Indians died. / Oh the country was young / With God on its side.’ As for further wars, he ironically remarks: ‘You don’t count the dead / When God’s on your side.’
Perhaps we need to challenge the way the leader of a country can appropriate the concept of an interventionist God to promote his own agenda.
15.Experiences when young can dictate how we function as adults
Date of first publication: 18 January 2025
In my last column, I celebrated A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which I saw as particularly powerful in its condemnation of a society which showed little concern and compassion for children.
Behind the work of Dickens was the view of the child introduced by the poetic movement known as ‘Romanticism’. It was put most succinctly by William Wordsworth: ‘The child is father of the man.’ The experiences we have when young dictate how we will function as adults.
A Romantic poet to whom Dickens has been compared is William Blake. Like Dickens, Blake used his literary skills to condemn the inhumane treatment of children in his day.
Throughout the 18th and most of the 19th centuries in England, chimneys were swept by small children, known as ‘climbing boys’. The smaller the child, the better. No protective clothing was supplied. Their heads were shaved. Many of them died in the course of their work, or else were abandoned in the street and left to starve.
For Blake’s perspective, we might consider the second of two poems he wrote on the subject, both entitled ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ – this one being published in 1794.
The young sweep presented here has no illusions about his dreadful life. He protests that it was his own mother and father who sold him into a life of misery: ‘They clothed me in the clothes of death / And taught me to sing the notes of woe.’
When asked where they are, he bitterly reports that they are now attending church. They have ‘gone to praise God and his Priest and King, / Who make up a heaven of our misery.’
Blake was a spiritual revolutionary. He rejected the conventional God, whom he renamed as ‘Nobodaddy’. The only spiritual being whom he put his faith in was Jesus, who embodied liberation from all oppression, whether sacred or secular.
Blake castigated the religious authorities of his day, condemning them for their indifference to the suffering of the poor – particularly children such as the one featured in the poem above.
Given Blake’s perspective, we might wonder, in the light of the appalling cases of child abuse which the contemporary church has allowed to continue over the decades, what kind of God do those clergy who are guilty either of abuse or of concealing abuse actually believe in?
14.In praise of a deeply humane classic for the festive season
Date of first publication: 7 December 2024
It’s the time of year when many people think about re-reading Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, or perhaps seeing a dramatised or filmed version, to get in the festive mood. But it’s also interesting to think about the circumstances in which he wrote it.
Dickens was a great campaigner, and nearly all of his novels address important issues of his day. He was particularly concerned with the way impoverished children were being treated. He had himself experienced mistreatment and neglect as a child. His father having been imprisoned for debt, Charles was withdrawn from school in order to earn money. He was forced to labour for long hours in a blacking factory, where he was treated brutally. He never got over the experience.
Dickens became a tireless campaigner against the cruel treatment of the poor – especially the children. At the time he was formulating his idea for A Christmas Carol in 1843 he was also considering whether to write a pamphlet on the subject; but he realised that a seasonal story would have the greater impact. For quite a while he had been concerned with the impact of the revision of the Poor Law, which reduced the money spent on the destitute, resulting in many more of them being removed to a workhouse.
Everyone who’s read A Christmas Carol remembers Scrooge (‘Bah! Humbug!’) and the Cratchit family – in particular the badly disabled Tiny Tim (‘God bless us, every one!’). But it’s also hard to forget the moment when the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two starving, shrivelled children.
As he explains to Scrooge: ‘They are Man’s . . . This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.’ This powerful image is Dickens’ warning to his readers that when we mistreat the young, they will grow up embittered and violent, perpetuating the savagery of society.
George Orwell – himself a great social commentator – praised Dickens in a brilliant phrase, as ‘a man who is generously angry’. There is no pettiness in A Christmas Carol. Though Dickens’ own childhood experience informed his fiction, he never let his own status and success blind him to the suffering of others.
13.In helping to heal the Earth, we can begin to heal ourselves
Date of first publication: 31 October 2024
A recent UN summit on biodiversity has revealed that ecosystems on Earth are at the edge of catastrophe, and that global wildlife populations have declined by 73% in the last 50 years.
It’s always tempting to turn the page when we read about such matters. The desire to repress the truth about what’s happening to the Earth is all too common in today’s world. It’s as damaging for us as it is for the planet we live on.
For deep down, we know all too well that much of the natural world is dying. There exists an ‘ecological unconscious’ which registers what we are trying consciously to evade. In its depths we experience not mild melancholy (the subject of my last column) but severe depression.
In his pioneering book, THE VOICE OF THE EARTH, first published 30 years ago, Theodore Roszak set out his case for what he called ‘ecopsychology’.
He had long since understood the importance of ecology – the study of the Earth as our home (Greek, oikos). Now he had come to realize that there was a connection between the state of the Earth and the state of the human mind, or soul (Greek, psyche).
This would be revealed by a new kind of psychology that would take into account the devastating effects of our alienation from the very source of our being – nature.
Roszak sees industrial society as a form of madness. It can only work by means of a divorce of the human soul from the source of its being. None of us can begin to heal except through commitment to dwelling responsibly on the Earth.
As Roszak explains: ‘Other therapies seek to heal the alienation between person and person, person and family, person and society. Ecopsychology seeks to heal the more fundamental alienation between the person and the natural environment.’
Opening out to what our distant ancestors understood instinctively opens up the possibility of a truly human culture that would regain the archaic sense of oneness with the Earth which the modern world has lost.
Ecopsychology teaches us that in the same way as we have to accept our responsibility to other people, we have to accept our responsibility to the planet. The goal is to become both a whole individual and a citizen of the whole Earth community. In helping to heal the Earth, we begin to heal ourselves.
12.Autumn is the perfect time of year to think about melancholy
Date of first publication: 3 October 2024
Autumn is here. As the leaves fall, some of us might have a sense of sadness. So it’s a good time to talk about melancholy.
In Shakespeare’s day, melancholy was seen as one of four ‘humours’ that were thought to characterise particular people. Hamlet would be seen as a typically melancholy figure.
A little later, Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) provided a rather rambling exploration of the condition, but it did make it sound interesting and full of potential.
Certainly, melancholy has moved many great composers to produce superbly beautiful music. Listen, for example, to the fourth movement of Mahler’s 5th Symphony, or to the third movement of Elgar’s 1st Symphony.
The same goes for poetry. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, a series of lyric poems lamenting the death of his friend Arthur Hallam, is one of the most moving poetic works of the 19th century. For example: ‘He is not here; but far away / The noise of life begins again, / And ghastly through the drizzling rain / On the bald street breaks the blank day.’
A poet who became widely known for the melancholy mood of his verses is A. E. Housman. A Shropshire Lad is, again, a series of lyrics, the most famous of which takes the form of question and answer. The first verse poses the question: ‘Into my heart an air that kills / From yon far country blows: / What are those blue remembered hills, / What spires, what farms are those?’ The second verse gives the answer: ‘That is the land of lost content, / I see it shining plain, / The happy highways where I went / And cannot come again.’ It is perfect in its poignancy.
Here’s a short poem of pure melancholy by Frances Cornford about another poet, Rupert Brooke: ‘A young Apollo, golden-haired, / Stands dreaming on the verge of strife, / Magnificently unprepared / For the long littleness of life.’ Ironically, he was to die young in the Great War. It’s a case of sadness either way.
Finally, let’s note what two famous writers said about melancholy. ‘I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy’ (Charles Baudelaire). ‘There is life and there is death, and there are beauty and melancholy between’ (Albert Camus).
11.The curious case of the forgotten ‘Poet of the Peak’
Date of first publication: 8 August 2024
You most likely will not know the name of William Newton. He has been long forgotten, but in his day he was hailed by a contemporary poet, Anna Seward, as the ‘Poet of the Peak’. She was an established and prolific author, while he was a labouring man with a gift for rhyme. Very few of his poems have survived. Indeed, it’s possible that those are all he ever wrote.
So what do we know about William Newton? He was born in 1750, in the parish of Eyam, Derbyshire, and as a youth he trained as a carpenter. Anna Seward helped him financially, and supported him in his bid to become a partner in a cotton mill in Cressbrook Dale. He died in 1830 and was buried at Tideswell.
I suppose the question most readers will be asking is whether he was actually any good as a poet. Looking over his modest body of work, I’d say that he had a certain technical skill and a flair for vivid phrases. In a sonnet written in 1790, he laments the early death of one of his children: ‘My life’s chief gem enwrapped in timeless mould!’
The major poetic influence on Newton was William Collins (1721-59), famous for his ‘Ode to Evening’. Perhaps he felt an affinity with the earlier poet, who was known for having a talent that he never fully developed.
In ‘Lines on the Fate of Collins’ (1792), Newton regrets that his poetic hero was not praised while he was alive: ‘Such envied Genius is alas! Thy fate, / Owned, loved and honoured by the world too late!’ But his estimate of his poetic hero is striking: ‘Thou, gentle Collins, knew’st each fierce extreme, / Neglect’s chill gloom, and Fancy’s sun-bright beam.’ Now he is ‘Placed on Imagination’s airy throne.’
Newton’s own obscurity is, though, a cause for regret. His poetry only being known briefly and then forgotten, we might think of Thomas Gray’s famous lines: ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’
Newton’s case is certainly worth pondering. We can all think of people who had talent but who never brought it to fruition or who never had due recognition. Fortunately, scholars have in recent years been compiling anthologies of ‘English labouring-class poets’: Newton and others like him are now been rescued from obscurity.
10.Let’s celebrate the wonderful promise of a secret garden
Date of first publication: 11 July 2024
This is the time of year when villages across our region hold ‘Open Garden’ days, when we’re invited to see those gardens which we wouldn’t otherwise, and admire the care that the gardeners have taken with their particular patch of earth. Indeed, to ‘open’ one’s garden is also to share a secret.
The most beautiful gardens are those resulting from years of quiet dedication. The flowers, shrubs and trees will obviously have been loved and nurtured. Nature will have been respected and will not have been interfered with more than necessary. It may well be a place in which the gardener has sought solace over the years.
Whether we have a religious faith or not, perhaps it is not going too far to suggest that a garden is in its own way a reminder of Paradise, when humanity and the natural world were in harmony. That yearning for a time and a place in which we felt at peace is celebrated by Frederick Delius in his beautiful orchestral work, appropriately titled The Walk to the Paradise Garden (1906).
Here, though, let me focus on another work: the intriguing novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911). Written for children, it remains a favourite work of adults. I said above that all gardens have a secret; here, the garden is totally hidden and the plot celebrates its rediscovery.
Mary Lennox is orphaned at the age of ten, and comes to live at a manor house on the Yorkshire moors – the home of her uncle, who rarely visits because he has not recovered from the death of his wife.
Mary spends her days wandering around the grounds, and becomes fascinated by a robin which seems to be accompanying her. Eventually, she realises that the bird is directing her towards a walled garden which has been locked away and neglected ever since the lady of the manor died.
In time, she finds the key and she enters the garden. I won’t spoil the plot, so suffice it to say that the whole direction of the novel is towards the moment of healing.
I can’t recommend this novel enough. Also worth celebrating is the 1993 film version directed by Agnieszka Holland, which really captures the atmosphere of the book and which leaves the viewer feeling all the more aware of the beauty – and the promise – of all the secret gardens which we occasionally open to our neighbours.
9.What Shakespeare has to say about the drama of our lives
Date of first publication: 6 June 2024
Have you ever felt that you are taking part in a play, and that your life is one long performance in which you are adopting a series of roles? The world’s greatest playwright certainly understood that feeling.
Everyone knows the opening of the famous speech by his character Jaques in As You Like It (1599): ‘All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.’ In that speech, life is presented as having seven phases, culminating in old age. ‘Last scene of all, / That ends this strange eventful history, / Is second childishness and mere oblivion…’
The intriguing thing about ‘All the world’s a stage’ is that it occurs in the middle of one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies. So the melancholy speech stands in tension with the life-affirming action of the play. In other words, we can agree that human life is rather like a drama without subscribing to the gloomy sequence outlined by Jaques.
For thoroughgoing pessimism about the human drama we must turn to the tragedies, notably Macbeth (1606). The murderous main character, realising that his ambitions have been thwarted and that his end is nigh, can only conclude: ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.’ The tragic action of the play certainly confirms this judgement.
Shakespeare’s last great plays are called ‘romances’, as they are full of mysteries and marvels. In Act Four of The Tempest (1611), Prospero – magician and sage – stages a masque (a drama within the drama) for his daughter and her suitor. Bringing it to an end, he tells them that the characters ‘were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air’. Similarly, the world we know, with its ‘cloud-capp’d towers’, its ‘gorgeous palaces’, its ‘solemn temples, shall ‘dissolve / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind.’
As for us: ‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep’. Is this vision tragic or comic? Neither. It represents a wise acceptance of our impermanence and a corrective to our arrogance. So let’s play the parts that life demands without getting attached to any – and then be ready to leave the stage once we have heard ‘the chimes at midnight’ (Henry IV Part 2).
8.Fascinating story behind ‘Jerusalem’ is definitely worth delving into
Date of first publication: 16 May 2024
We all know the tune of ‘Jerusalem’. It was written by Hubert Parry in 1916 – in the midst of the Great War. The intention was to boost morale, and few people would want to deny that it is a rousing hymn.
Though Parry was willing to inspire the English nation at that time, it is unlikely that he would have been pleased to hear the hymn sung heartily at the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ along with ‘Rule Britannia’. He was no pillar of the establishment. Rather, he was an atheist, a pacifist and a campaigner for women’s suffrage.
The words of ‘Jerusalem’ actually come from the ‘Preface’ to an epic poem written by William Blake in honour of an earlier poet who inspired him: Milton (1808).
John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, had been a vigorous spokesperson for the 17C English Revolution – even going so far as to defend the execution of Charles I on Biblical grounds. However, Blake was convinced that physical violence was to be avoided, and he believed in a republic of the imagination. Where he refers to a sword, it is symbolic. ‘I will not cease from Mental Fight, / Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand: / Till we have built Jerusalem / In England’s green & pleasant Land.’
The inspiration for the lyric was the legend that Jesus visited England as a boy: ‘And did those feet in ancient time / Walk upon England’s mountains green: / And was the holy Lamb of God / On England’s pleasant pastures seen?’ If this was indeed the case, why should we not work to re-establish God’s kingdom in our land – ‘Among these dark Satanic Mills?’
That phrase is sometimes read as referring to the industrial revolution; but it is equally likely that Blake is thinking of the established church, which he sees as having corrupted the message of Jesus. So if Jerusalem is to be rebuilt, it will be in defiance of the religious authorities.
After all, in an earlier poem, ‘London’, he discovers evidence of the ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ in church as well as state, as he protests: ‘How the Chimney-sweepers cry / Every blackning Church appalls, / And the hapless Soldiers sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls.’ The author of those lines – and of ‘Jerusalem’ – was no more a pillar of the establishment than Parry himself.
7.There is plenty to think about in mythology of St George
Date of first publication: 18 April 2024
Though St George is honoured in some other countries, it is in England that St George’s Day, 23 April, is taken most seriously. The flag of St George, with its red cross on a white background, has long been associated with patriotism. However, there’s a lot more to it than that.
Certainly, the mythology surrounding him provides a lot for the imagination to work on. In one version he is a Christian martyr – condemned to death by the Roman emperor for refusing to renounce his faith. In another version, he is a dragon-slayer.
As a martyr, he may be understood as ascending to heaven after his death. But in the rural folk culture of England he became associated with what we call ‘fertility myth’: specifically, he was assumed to take the role of the dying and reviving god of vegetation. That’s why he is celebrated in the spring, and why he is associated with such symbolic figures as Green George, Jack in the Green and the Green Man. Morris dancing celebrates his rebirth and reaffirms the endless cycle of nature.
As slayer of the dragon, he clearly belongs to ‘hero myth’. In many versions of his story he rescues a princess who is about to be sacrificed to a monster which is also threatening to lay waste the country.
In a Christian perspective it is possible to relate George’s story to what I call ‘deliverance myth’. George, in slaying the dragon, points the way to a future liberation for all God’s people – as told in the Book of Revelation. Michael the archangel defeats Satan, depicted as a dragon, and at the same time the demonic kingdom of Babylon is overthrown.
All this is implicit in our celebration of St George’s Day. It carries a promise for England itself that the land will be renewed annually in the seasonal cycle, that heroism is still possible in our country and that Albion (the mythical name for England) will be redeemed.
The myth and ritual of St George are reaffirmed in a song by Richard Thompson called ‘The New St George’. It calls on the working people of England to heroically defend the land from corrupt politicians, greedy employers and irresponsible landowners. Listen to his original and also to the version recorded by the Albion Band: two very different renditions, but equally inspiring. (Both are available on YouTube.)
6.Wordsworth’s wisdom helps in defence of natural world
Date of first publication: 22 Feb 2024
It’s all too easy to lapse into defeatism and despair when we think about the task of protecting our natural environment. We know it’s urgent that we protect our rivers, woodland and wildlife. A reliable source of inspiration is the poetry of William Wordsworth (1770-1850), which reminds us of how much nature can – and should – mean to us.
Memorably, he does so in ‘The Tables Turned’, a poem written in response to a friend’s suggestion that his time would be better spent in reading books of ideas than in communing with his natural environment. On the contrary, says the poet: ‘One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man, / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can.’
It’s not that difficult, Wordsworth tells us. As long as we can hear a bird singing, we can affirm our relationship with the earth: ‘And hark! how blithe the throstle [song thrush]sings! / He, too, is no mean preacher: / Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.’
That line, ‘Come forth into the light of things’ tells us that nature is in every aspect illuminating. Trees, streams, mountains, flowers: they are all charged with ‘light’, and we are invited to align ourselves with it. The word ‘things’ might strike us as odd, but Wordsworth is simply being ‘down to earth’, so to speak – celebrating the natural world in all its manifestations.
‘The Tables Turned’, then, gives us a moment of insight into nature as our true home. In a longer, more reflective poem, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, Wordsworth spells this idea out. He speaks of a source ‘Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: / A motion and a spirit, that impels / All thinking things, all objects of all thought, / And rolls through all things.’
Essentially, here is an anticipation of what we now call ‘ecology’, which is the study of the earth as our ‘home’ (Greek, oikos), for which we are responsible. Our duty is to regain our connection with outer nature, and to understand that our inner nature is inseparable from it.
Wordsworth can certainly help us in this process.
5.It is better to learn from our mistakes and move on
Date of first publication: 4 January 2024
When Frank Sinatra agreed to record a French song with English lyrics (written by Paul Anka), he couldn’t have known how often it would be quoted. By now, we all know those defiantly casual lines: ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few, / But then again, too few to mention.’
At a time of year when we usually make resolutions, we often ponder our own reasons to feel regret. For example, we may resolve to keep to a diet, having regretted our gain in weight. That’s fair enough, but on the whole we might do worse than adopt Sinatra’s carefree approach to the apparent obligation to be in a constant state of guilt.
Of course, we’re not talking about criminal or malicious behaviour, about which the perpetrator should surely feel continual remorse. Rather, we’re talking about everyday mistakes that any of us might make.
Here I think it’s worth quoting 19C philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who puts this issue into perspective: ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards.’ In other words, we have to blunder along as best we can, doing what we think is appropriate at the time – without ever knowing the full consequences.
For instance, a man of 50 might torment himself by wondering: ‘What on earth was I playing at 30 years ago? What was I thinking of at the age of 20?’ Or else he might take time to reflect: ‘Well, that was then; this is now.’
Perhaps we might also learn from the wisdom of spiritual thinker Eckhart Tolle. In The Power of Now, he distinguishes between two kinds of time.
If you made a mistake in the past, and learn from it now, without making any fuss, you are using ‘clock time’.
But if you dwell on it, if you make it ‘mine’, and if you indulge in self-criticism, remorse or guilt, you are trapping yourself in ‘psychological time’. Regret will have become a permanent obsession which is poisoning your mind. Tolle tells us to remind ourselves that we are always in the ‘Now’, and to celebrate the awareness that comes with it.
We might not describe Frank Sinatra as spiritual thinker. But when he sang Paul Anka’s song, he was right after all. Let’s give ourselves permission to feel a little more comfortable with learning from our mistakes and then moving on.
4.Follow the yellow brick road to find some interesting ideas
Date of first publication: 7 December 2023
The Wizard of Oz is an entertaining, classic film that is always worth viewing again. One reason is that it’s full of interesting ideas. Here are a few.
Reality and Fantasy.
Some of the characters in Kansas reappear in the land of Oz, but transfigured. The three farmhands become the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion who join Dorothy on her journey. The nasty Miss Gulch, who wants to have Dorothy’s little dog, Toto, put down, becomes the Wicked Witch of the West. Professor Marvel, the bogus psychic, becomes the Wizard of Oz.
This reminds us that ordinary people are potentially fascinating, and that even the wildest fantasy has its roots in the mundane world with which we might be dissatisfied.
Don’t Be Fooled!
When Dorothy and her three friends stand before the awesome image of the Wizard of Oz for the second time, Toto is the one to uncover the Wizard’s secret: he pulls away a curtain to the side of the huge image of the Wizard, revealing an ordinary man manipulating a machine. The image of the almighty Wizard is a fraud. A little dog teaches us that all too often those who appear high and mighty are actually humble mortals putting on an act.
The Circuitous Quest.
The traditional quest narrative nearly always involved a male hero – a warrior who has to prove his worth – but here the protagonist is a young girl with no special strength or secret power. Yet what Dorothy gains from her journey is remarkable, making her ready to return home.
If Dorothy’s adventure can be described as a quest, then it’s best described as ‘circuitous’. To quote the poet T.S.Eliot: ‘And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.’
Enough Already!
Dorothy thought she needed the Wizard to show her the way home, but the Good Witch tells her simply to click the heels of her ruby slippers, think of home, and she’ll be there – because she has now learnt to appreciate it. ‘There’s no place like home.’
Similarly, her three friends don’t need the Wizard to grant their wishes. In coming to Dorothy’s aid when she’s caught by the Wicked Witch, they prove that they already have a brain (Scarecrow), a heart (Tin Man) and courage (Lion).
There’s lots more to say … but for now that’s enough already!
3.Poetry can often help us to make some sense of our lives
Date of first publication: 19 October 2023
Every remembrance day it’s customary to recite these key lines from Laurence Binyon’s ‘To the Fallen’: ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: / Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At the going down of the sun and in the morning / We will remember them.’ Few people can remain unmoved by those words in that order.
Poetry is well worth turning to when we want to make sense of our lives. We can find a reason in rhyme.
W. H. Davies offers good advice in the form of a question: ‘What is this world if, full of care, / We have no time to stop and stare?’ The radical Christian poet William Blake invites us to open up our imaginations and see the beauty of nature and the mystery of the cosmos: ‘To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour…’
To say that poetry helps us live is not to say that it should ignore the fact of death. Shakespeare puts it into perspective: ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, / Nor the furious winter’s rages; / Thou thy worldly task hast done, / Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages: / Golden lads and girls all must, / As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.’
Those of us who are well advanced in years might often turn to W.S. Landor’s reflections: ‘I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. / Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: / I warmed both hands before the fire of life; / It sinks, and I am ready to depart.’
Interestingly, there are a lot of poems about poetry itself and how it can help us live. W.H. Auden wrote a powerful poem on the occasion of the death of a poet he admired, W.B. Yeats, conveying the function of all great poets: ‘In the deserts of the heart / Let the healing fountain start. / In the prison of his days / Teach the free man how to praise.’ That’s exactly what I’m trying to say – but said many times better, in the form of verse!
2.Green dimension in Christian message is an important one
Date of first publication: 17 August 2023
It was Joni Mitchell who reminded us: ‘We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.’ In order to emphasise her ‘green’ message she instinctively drew on Biblical imagery.
In the first chapter of Genesis, we are told repeatedly that as God systematically created the earth and all its glories he ‘saw that it was good’.
Then, in the second chapter, we learn that the first man, Adam, created by God to live in the Garden of Eden, is formed from the earth itself (Adamah). His role is essentially stewardship of the very earth from which he has arisen.
We all know what happens in the third chapter: Adam and his wife Eve are expelled from the Garden for disobeying God. Famously, St Augustine in the fifth century AD was prompted by this episode to formulate his theory of ‘Original Sin’: we have all inherited the offence committed by Adam and Eve.
But countering this is the theory formulated much more recently by the radical priest Matthew Fox – that of ‘Original Blessing’. This reminds us that God had seen his creation was ‘good’, and that we are invited both to serve it and to rejoice in it.
It’s noteworthy that Jesus in the Gospels consistently uses imagery which evokes the natural world. For example, he compares the Kingdom of God to ‘a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches’ (Luke 13: 18-19).
In the New Testament, we find Jesus being referred to as ‘the second Adam’ and ‘the son of Adam’. Significantly, when he arises from his tomb in the garden, Mary Magdalene at first mistakes him for a gardener. This might remind us that his concern is just as much for the earth as for heaven.
Indeed, Bishop James Jones, thinking of Jesus’s prayer – ‘Our Father … thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ – is prompted to coin a memorable phrase: ‘The consummation of the coming Kingdom is the earthing of heaven.’
Joni Mitchell may not have intended to say all this, but her ‘green’ message is all the more powerful given these Biblical connections. Conversely, the Christian faith only makes full sense when it takes on a ‘green’ dimension.
1.Everyone has the democratic right to some peace and quiet
Date of first publication: 11 May, 2023
When I walk into my local shopping centre, the first sound I hear is not that of casual conversation, but non-stop piped music – played loud. I once asked one of the men running it whether they ever got fed up with the noise, and wanted to turn it down – or even off. His reply: ‘We can’t. It’s controlled at HQ’.
A standard definition of ‘noise’ is ‘an unpleasant sound’: one that is loud, irritating, or unwanted. For many shoppers, piped music exactly fits the bill. It’s everywhere, of course. It’s increasingly difficult to find an eating or drinking place that isn’t dominated by it – often at deafening volume. If you object, you may well be asked: ‘Don’t you like music?’ It’s tempting to reply: ‘Yes, and that’s the point!’
Indeed, many musical celebrities disapprove strongly of muzak: they see it as a debasement of the medium, whether pop or classical. The patrons of the brilliant ‘Pipedown’ campaign include Lesley Garrett, Julian Lloyd Webber and Simon Rattle.
As for the volume, those on the autism spectrum, or those with conditions such as CFS/ME and fibromyalgia, find loud music positively painful. Again, it is no coincidence that the US military used to blast round-the-clock rock music at their prisoners as a form of torture.
Avoiding locations which impose muzak, however, does not rid you of the problem of noise nuisance. All too often, the tranquillity of your home and garden is liable to be ruined, either by inconsiderate neighbours who play their sound systems at full blast or by workmen nearby who can’t work without their boombox. Again, a peaceful walk down a country lane is all too often marred by a thumping car stereo.
Such everyday experiences bring home an unavoidable fact: noise is a form of pollution. There’s so much of it: hence it is becoming more and more difficult to find a peaceful location. So we have to see it as an environmental challenge. The noise from traffic and industry is a major problem, of course. But the point about the noise from unwelcome music is that it could so easily be avoided, simply by those responsible stopping to consider its effect.
Music we have chosen is a great pleasure. But if it’s imposed on us, it counts as noise. We need to insist that everyone has the democratic right to peace and quiet.