Easter

Thursday

Camilla Swift

Podcast: In defence of Christianity, and the Conservatives’ lack of passion

Being a Christian in Britain today is to invite pity or condescension, writes Michael Gove in this week’s cover piece. Why is that, and what is the future of Christianity in Britain? Michael Gove joined Isabel Hardman and Ken Costa, the Chairman of Alpha International, on this week’s View from 22 podcast, to discuss the issue. Has there always been this much suspicion of Christians, or is this a more recent phenomenon? James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson also joined Isabel Hardman to talk about this week’s leading article. In it, The Spectator argues that the Tory campaign so far has lacked passion. The Conservatives ought by all accounts to be winning in

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s curiously sanitised Christianity

David Cameron has written a rather interesting piece for Premier Christianity magazine on his faith and the meaning of Easter. I use the word ‘interesting’ advisedly and in the sense that an aged relative might deploy it when regarding some new fangled Christmas present that has a touch screen. The final two paragraphs are particularly interesting: ‘So I end my argument with this: I hope everyone can share in the belief of trying to lift people up rather than count people out. Those values and principles are not the exclusive preserve of one faith or religion. They are something I hope everyone in our country believes. ‘That after all is the

Wednesday

Mary Dejevsky

Want to understand the conflict in Ukraine? Compare it to Ireland

What seemed this time last year to be a little local difficulty in Ukraine has metastasised to the point where a peace plan drafted in Paris and Berlin may be all that stands in the way of war between the West and Russia. Over the months, many of those watching, appalled, from the safety of the side-lines, have combed history for precedents and parallels that might aid understanding or offer clues as to what might be done. Last spring, after Russia snatched Crimea and appeared ready to grab a chunk of eastern Ukraine too, the favoured comparisons were with Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation of Sudetenland. It was a parallel that

Tuesday

Harry Cole

The UK is a Christian country, whether the Left like it or not

As the crucifixion of Damian McBride over Easter in 2009 proves, the four-day news void can be gruesome for Downing Street, yet it seems congratulations are in order this year. No.10 managed to throw the chattering classes such a juicy bone of distraction that they all spent Easter trying to convince themselves that the UK is not a Christian country. The row was stoked by an assorted group of lefties with impeccable Labour, Liberal and Green credentials writing to the Telegraph, questioning why a PM may possibly wish to talk about religion. The irony that it was Easter, top and tailed by two bank holidays where their entire ‘non-Christian country’

Steerpike Steerpike

Dave’s brush with the bed bugs

First it was a jellyfish that blighted the Prime Minister’s Easter break in Lanzarote. Now, according to Trip Advisor, fellow guests at the discreet Casa Tomaren might have had more than the PM’s  swarming security detail and travelling aides to worry about. One happy punter writes: ‘We just spent a holiday at Casa Tomaren and I wish I had not. After our first night we complained of ants in our beds and in hindsight we should have left straight away but did not want to spoil our holiday. As the holiday progressed our girls got bitten to death by bed bugs and I have picked up some other bug related rash

Sunday

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Brace yourself for the real experience of going to a rural parish service on Easter Sunday

‘And we extend a special welcome to all our visitors here today.’ That’s the vicar speaking; and this Sunday is one of the two days in the year when you are likely to be one of those visitors. You’re spending Easter with in-laws or friends who live in the country. Easter wouldn’t feel like Easter without Eucharist at the local C of E church after the first mini-egg of the day, so here you are, in tweed and wool, breathing in the timeless smell of damp and candle-wax as you try to prop up the paperback hymn book called Praise! on the pew shelf but it is too big and

The Spectator

Happy Easter | 31 March 2013

It is a glorious morning, suitable weather to mark this joyous day in the Christian calendar. The leading column in this week’s issue of the magazine considers the Easter story in humanity’s past, present and future, from perspective of non-believers as well as believers. Here’s a short excerpt: ‘Unlike Christmas, it’s a story that doesn’t lend itself to much commercial fuss: no kings or presents. Easter is a story of sacrifice, torture, abandonment and death — and, through it all, triumph over that death. Even in the 21st century; despite all the chocolate eggs, Easter gives us pause. And it’s Easter, not Christmas, that makes Christianity such a radical religion.

Christian Guy

Why church leaders are wrong to attack welfare cuts

Another day, another welfare row. The practical outworking of the Government’s most controversial idea – that people on welfare should actually be better off in work, continues to spark outrage. Today it is church leaders who line up to try to land punches on Iain Duncan Smith, making an attack on his decision that welfare payments (like the average salary) should not keep pace with inflation. In leading the biggest package of welfare reform since the first foundation stone of social security was laid by William Beveridge, IDS  is familiar with the poverty lobby’s ongoing shock-and-awe strategy. Yet like so many who have gone before, today’s critics miss the bigger

Friday

Alex Massie

Happy Easter | 29 March 2013

I’m away to Jura* for the Easter weekend, so it’s improbable there will be much posting happening around here. I hope you all have a splendid weekend, especially those of you for whom this is a properly significant time of year. See you next week, so to speak. *That’s a view towards Mull, taken from Glengarrisdale Bay on Jura’s uninhabited west coast.

Roger Scruton

Holy Week is a time for contemplation and renewal

Good Friday is a day for contemplation. If you have time, do read Roger Scruton’s piece in the latest issue of the Spectator. It is, among other things, a deep consideration of the damage caused by our society’s veneration of the trivial and transient. Here is a short excerpt: Wherever we find the cult of celebrity, therefore, we find deep unhappiness. ‘Fun’ has become the highest good, but fun is always out of reach, available only in that other and unattainable world where the stars are dancing. Meanwhile envy and resentment colour the world below, and there is no relief save the pleasures of consumption. If you want proof that

Camilla Swift Camilla Swift

Crime fiction at Easter? Look no further than our Scandinavian neighbours

If you thought that winter in Britain had gone on long enough this year, then spare a thought for the Norwegians. Winters in Norway are famously long, dark and bitter, and – for those who experience them year upon year – can be incredibly boring. During one such winter, in February 1923, two Norwegians called Nordahl Grieg and Nils Lie decided to alleviate their boredom by writing a book. The theme? A train robbery; or more specifically, a looting of the train to Bergen. The title of the book? The Bergen train was robbed in the night (or, in its original Norwegian: Bergenstoget plyndret i natt). Having written the book,

Sunday

The Spectator

The decline of the spirit

In celebration of the feast of Easter, we’ve dug out this profound leader from March 1975, which looks at the ever-evolving relationship of church and state.  The Church, the State and the decline of the spirit, The Spectator, 29 March 1975 Spring is a time of rebirth; yet it is also the time of the death of Christ. It is the time when “Jesus knew that his hour would come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13.i). In the Spring and Easter of 1975 there is much evidence of