Day Off Week 36 2022

We are beginning to get back to more regular patterns and so on Tuesday it was my official day off. I like to read on those days and so I picked up a book I bought on holiday in a charity shop. It is Melvyn Bragg on Twelve Books the changed the world. It came out in 2006 and was apparently accompanied by a series of four programmes on ITV, each an hour long. Not that I noticed. The books he chose are all English ones and some are not quite what you would call books Some were a bit sniffy about it but I enjoyed it (not quite finished as I write).

In the end he went for

Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton; Married Love by Marie Stopes; Magna Carta; the Rules of Association Football' On the Origin of Species by Darwin; On the Abolition of the Slave Trade by Wilberforce; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft' Experimental Researches in Electricity by Faraday' Richard Arkwright's patent specification for his "Spinning Machine"; The King James Bible; The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith; The First Folio by William Shakespeare.

by including the KJV and Darwin and Newton and Faraday and Magna Carta for that matter Bragg has to touch on higher things and he does on those books and others and whole not forsaking the liberal humanist stance he has long embraced I thought he was pretty judicious and is well worth a read.

In the middle of the day I popped in to Chipotle for lunch and in the evening watched an episode of the crime drama Ridley that we had recorded.

 

John Wesley on the Radio

I enjoyed listening yesterday to a recent edition of Melvyn Bragg's In our time on Radio 4. It was on  John Wesley and Methodism and can be accessed here. The approach is pretty secular but it spotlights some interesting and important matters.

Bragg on the covenanters

I notice that tomorrow morning at 9 am on Radio 4 Melvyn Bragg has an In our time on the covenanters. Should be interesting. The "experts" are Roger Mason, Laura Stewart and Scott Spurlock.

Bragg The Rapture

I'm a little behind at present with some things. Melvyn Bragg's In our time is up and runing again on Radio 4 and at the end of last month they had a programme on The Rapture with Crawford Gribben and two other academics. You can currently access it here. The programme was very informative, although there is one thing I must chase up that I read in Arnold Dallimore's biography of Edward Irving - that the idea of a secret rapture began with a young girl in Scotland, a disicple of Irving, who began to have ecstatic visions. It was only a45 minute programme.

Bragg and Hope

I haven't been listening to In our time recently but yesterday's offering was on the interesting subject of Hope. Following the usual format, Bragg's experts took us helpfully through the subject from Hesiod through Aquinas and Luther to Sartre, Tolkien (only in the podcast) and modern times. Fascinating. Though unfamiliar with Locke, Kant and Heidegger I would guess your average well taught Christian would have thought much of this through already though not in the same way. The current link is here.

Melvyn Bragg: children should read the Bible

Melvyn Bragg: children should read the Bible - Premier: Presenter of Radio 4's 'In Our time', Melvyn Bragg has encouraged schools to reintroduce Bible readings so that children aren't 'deprived' of 'the depth of language' in the words
Melvyn Bragg said he thinks it's a disgrace that children don't get to read the Bible in school. The broadcaster and author is an atheist but said: "They say it's too complicated, what are they talking about?" He called those who were daunted by the book "Wimps, terrible people".
Regarding the difficulty in reading the Bible, he said: "We have to work a bit harder and that's also good". He added that Shakespeare is getting more and more popular and that it is nearly always heard in the original language. Bragg described the Bible as "equally powerful".
He continued: "I think it is a great deprivation. What have we thrown away? One of the greatest pieces of art, work, whatever way you want to put it. It's awful. As for being too difficult, really? Honestly. We should be too good for that".
Speaking at the Henley Literary Festival, Melvyn Bragg was giving a talk on William Tyndale, the man who lost his life in 1536 for translating the Bible into English so people could read it without having to learn Latin.

Emily Dickinson

I have mentioned Emily Dickinson before now and how I discovered her in University. She wrote 1800 poems in her life time but only had ten or eleven published. She has been brought to mind again by two media events. First, I persuaded Eleri to join me in the Phoenix, East Finchley to see A Quiet Passion the other week. I think her comment at the end "That's two hours we'll never get back again" was a trifle harsh but it is fair to say that the life of Emily Dickinson of Amherst, New England is not the stuff of movie blockbusters and so, despite valiant efforts, the film struggled to keep the interest up. More recently, on Radio 4, Melvyn Bragg has had some experts in to do an In our time on her. (See here). This was a much better format for looking at this interesting woman. I found the suggestion that not all her first person poems are about her a new angle to explore. Here is an example of her simple genius.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - 
That perches in the soul - 
And sings the tune without the words - 
And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - 
And sore must be the storm - 
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm - 

 I’ve heard it in the chillest land - 
And on the strangest Sea - 
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Burnt Norton coincidence

I long ago learned that coincidences are common. They can still be very striking. I began my day today with Sinclair Ferguson's book on sanctification Devoted to God. In the opening chapter he quotes T S Eliot's line at the opening of Burnt Norton, one of his Four Quartets. It goes

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.

As I got ready to go out I popped the radio on as I did. It was Melvyn Bragg (who I passed on the street yesterday in Hampstead as it happens - on more coincidence) and In our time. The subject was T S Eliot which did not make me twig at first but then one of the experts quoted the very lines I had read shortly before

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction 
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

You can read the whole thing here.

Bragg on the Talmud

Today's In our time on Radio 4 with Melvyn Bragg was an interesting one. It was on the Jewish Talmud. Details can be found here.

Bragg about the Trinity

I was beginning to lose faith with Melvyn Bragg and In our time but the latest programme on the Trinity is worth a listen. See here. (I meant to thank Guy Davies for the tip off. 

Book of Common Prayer

Melvyn Bragg's In our time was on the Book of Common Prayer. Very interesting, as ever. See here for the recording.

Bragg on Solomon

I'm a bit behind with me Melvyn Bragg but if you check out the website here you should be able to find the one on Solomon, which though very secular was nowhere as near as anti-conservative as it might have been and worth a listen.

Wycliffe on Radio 4

Melvyn Bragg has been at it again discussing the Morning Star of the Reformation, John Wyclif(fe) with the experts on Radio 4. See here for the podcast. Also see here. The experts on this occasion are Sir Anthony Kenny (philosopher and former Master of Balliol College, Oxford), Anne Hudson (Emeritus Professor of Medieval English at the University of Oxford) and Rob Lutton (Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Nottingham).

Bragg on the AV

I watched on Saturday Melvyn Bragg's The King James Bible: The Book That Changed the World on BBC 2. Rather disappointing , it was a solo effort from Bragg with none of the usual talking heads. Its main failure was the way it sat so loose to the subject itself. We had a little bit of linguistic reference then a lot of history that had little directly to do with the AV. Finally Lord Bragg summed up by saying that (I summarise) liberalism needs a bit of religion thrown in to be really good. At least I know not to read the book (Lord Bragg's that is). Available for a few more days here.

Foxe's Martyrs

I notice that Melvyn Bragg is planning to discuss Foxe's Book of Martyrs on Radio 4 next week. Details here. It will probably be rather frustrating but may be there will be something good.

Calvin on Radio 4

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Melvyn Bragg's In our time this morning 9 am is on Calvinism. They say here

Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Susan Hardman Moore and Diarmaid MacCulloch discuss the ideas of the religious reformer John Calvin - the theology known as Calvinism, or Reformed Protestantism - and its impact.

John Calvin, a Frenchman exiled to Geneva, became a towering figure of the 16th century Reformation of the Christian Church. He achieved this not through charismatic oratory, but through the relentless rigour of his analysis of the Bible. In Geneva, he oversaw an austere, theocratic and sometimes brutal regime. Nonetheless, the explosion of printing made his theology highly mobile. The zeal he instilled in his followers, and the persecution which dogged them, rapidly spread the faith across Europe, and on to the New World in America.

One of Calvin's most striking tenets was 'predestination': the idea that, even before the world began, God had already decided which human beings would be damned, and which saved. The hope of being one of the saved gave Calvinists a driving energy which has made their faith a galvanic force in the world, from business to politics.

Anxiety about salvation, meanwhile, led to a constant introspection which has left its mark on literature.

Justin Champion is Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London; Susan Hardman Moore is Senior Lecturer in Divinity at the University of Edinburgh; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford.