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The values and horizons of our world, the atmosphere that prevails in it and the language that dominates it, are dictated to a great extent by what is known as mass media, or mass communication. The term ‘mass media’ was coined in the 1920s, when sociologists began to refer to ‘mass society’. But are we
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Last night, Charles had felt her face with his fingers. It had been rather nice, she had to admit, those long hands scrupulously exploring all the contours of her face, as if she were printed out in Braille. She had sensed that he might have liked to go further, but she had not given him
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From Aquinas and the heretics: Apart from the guardianship of the Church over many centuries, it is hard to see whence would have derived the resources that later gave rise to modern science, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. The fundamental conceptions of progress, truth, compassion, the dignity of the individual, and the centrality of personal
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Herman, left alone, sat with his head bowed. He had noticed a copy of the Bible on the shelf near his chair and he leaned over and took it out. He leafed through the pages and found Psalms: ‘Be gracious unto me, O Lord, for I am in distress. Mine eye wasteth away with vexation,
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Anne Askew was burnt at the stake along with John Lascelles (a lawyer and Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber), John Hadlam (a tailor from Essex) and John Hemsley (a former Franciscan friar), on 16 July 1546. A great stage was built at Smithfield for the convenience of Chancellor Wriothesley, other members of the Privy
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Outlined against the fields, inevitable as landscape, a kerchiefed woman and a donkey trudge the dusty path, to where they fight the stubborn earth for food. Anchoress, she treads her daily silences, mantras iterating on her children; she knows no joy in exercise of muscle, spread of sky or shades of green on ten-mile tramps
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After Mark Gertler’s painting of 1916 Here we go round the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round, here we go round the merry-go-round in saecula saeculorum: on Hampstead Heath by threes we turn, no way forward – we never learn – fixed for ever, still and moving – our nannies nod their heads approving; trapped, we look in the
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I heard that life is no rehearsal, But performance of the play; Yet I have spent so long in learning lines I missed my time and lost the way. So I become a critic in the wings, Mocking observer of what others do and say, And dream of being the deus ex machine In the
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A blackbird alone in the dying sun’s footlights sings to a backdrop of indigo blue; for the sound of its voice, for the sake of the singing, it plays out the longest day of the year. Perched on the rooftop, stop-out blackbird, late home, carousing, careless of time, emptying its throat till its heart is
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Brompton Oratory, a hot lunch-time in July, a baby being received into the Catholic Church and Catholic upper-crust society: dressed-up, a group stands round the font. Otherwise the building’s almost empty, save a scattering of oddballs dotted round the nave, the occasional stray tourist fleeing from the sun. A little girl in blue-and-white-striped dress escapes
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Virginia Rounding: Author, editor, proofreader, indexer 