The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On this month's episode of the Book Club Podcast, Dr Natalie K. Watson, who has written about the book in this week’s Church Times, is in conversation with Sarah Meyrick. The Island of Missing Trees is set between Cyprus in 1974, at the start of the country’s conflict with Turkey, and London, decades later. Two teenagers, Kostas and Defne, from different sides of the warring parties, meet in secret ...
Apr 06, 2023•34 min
From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Malcolm Guite shares a sequence of sonnets for Holy Week. They are taken from his collection, Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). Today, he reflects on and reads his sonnet, “Maundy Thursday.” The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co....
Apr 06, 2023•6 min
From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Malcolm Guite shares a sequence of sonnets for Holy Week. They are taken from his collection, Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). Today, he reflects on and reads his sonnet, “The anointing at Bethany.” The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to church...
Apr 05, 2023•5 min
From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Malcolm Guite shares a sequence of sonnets for Holy Week. They are taken from his collection, Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). Today, he reflects on and reads his sonnet, “Cleansing the Temple.” The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtime...
Apr 04, 2023•5 min
From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Malcolm Guite shares a sequence of sonnets for Holy Week. They are taken from his collection, Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). Today, he reflects on and reads his sonnet, “Jesus weeps.” The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/n...
Apr 03, 2023•6 min
From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Malcolm Guite shares a sequence of sonnets for Holy Week. They are taken from his collection, Sounding the Seasons (Canterbury Press). “In composing these sonnets, I had in mind that mysterious and beautiful phrase in the Psalms about the man in whose heart are the highways to Zion (Psalm 84.5),” he says. “I wanted to develop the hint offered in that phrase that there is an inner as well as an outer Jerusalem, and that therefore the events of Holy Week are bo...
Apr 02, 2023•5 min
On the podcast this week, Olivia Jackson talks about her book (Un)Certain: A collective memoir of deconstructing faith. After the interview, she reads a short excerpt from the book. Faith deconstruction — the intentional examination of one's religious faith and beliefs, leading to a profound change in, or even loss of, that faith — has received increasing attention in the past few years, with the emergence of podcasts and online fora dedicated to discussing it. So, who are the people who deconst...
Mar 30, 2023•22 min
On the podcast this week, the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie talks about his new book, Touching Cloth: Confessions and communions of a young priest. He is interviewed by Ed Thornton. In a review of the book for the Church Times, the Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen says the book “tells the story of his [Fergus’s] first year as a priest at a city-centre church in Liverpool. The book is in the style of a diary following the liturgical year. It is filled with many funny stories of clerical mishaps, and profound spir...
Mar 24, 2023•23 min
In the fifth episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on the poem “Prayer” by Zaffar Kunial, published in his collection Us (Faber & Faber, 2018). “The beauty of life is heard in this poem, but are the prayers that emerge out of its fragility and pain heard by anyone, by God?” Canon Oakley says. “For all our stores of knowledge and ingenuity, there are questions whose answers remain unknown in life. Our approach to them can distil us or destroy us. The poet J...
Mar 23, 2023•16 min
In the fourth episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Winter Swans” by Owen Sheers, published in his collection Skirrid Hill (Seren Books, 2005). “Those with a religious belief are as human as everyone else,” Mark says. “They live with the ebb and flow of the heart, as well as the pain of what the past is up to in the present. "Deep within the heart of Christian faith, though, is the belief that human beings were made for relationship, and that, although man...
Mar 16, 2023•14 min
In the third episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Love (III)” by George Herbert. “Over my years of reading Herbert, I have come to see him as the poet who most expresses our relationship with God as a friendship,” Mark says. “I’m not talking about friendship in terms of the 600 ‘Friends’ we have on Facebook, but rather the one or two people who have changed our life for good and maybe at some cost to us both. “Thinking about these friends can dare us to r...
Mar 09, 2023•22 min
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On this episode of the Book Club Podcast, the Revd Alexander Faludy, who has written about the book in this week’s Church Times, is in conversation with Sarah Meyrick. Published in 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s war novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in 1937, near Segovia, during the Spanish Civil War. The lead character, Robert Jordan, is a young American teacher who volunteers to help a group of guer...
Mar 02, 2023•23 min
In the second episode of the Church Times Poetry Podcast for Lent, Mark Oakley reflects on “Don’t give me the whole truth” by Olav H. Hauge (1908–1994). The poem is published in Hauge’s 1996 collection of the same name, published by Anvil Press Poetry, an imprint of Carcanet Press. “Here in this poem, Hauge prays that he will only be given enough in life to keep him going,” Mark says. “He doesn’t want all that there is. Like birds who only carry off a few drops of water from the stream, or wind ...
Mar 02, 2023•14 min
We are pleased to present a new poetry podcast for Lent, in association with Canterbury Press. This week, Canon Mark Oakley reflects on “Paternoster” by Jen Hadfield. "Paternoster" is published in her collection Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which won the T.S. Eliot Prize. We are grateful to Bloodaxe Books for giving permission to play a recording of Jen Hadfield reading the poem. bloodaxebooks.com. “‘Paternoster’ is, to my mind, one of her most beautiful poems,” Mark says. “It is a pray...
Feb 23, 2023•15 min
The General Synod voted this week to welcome the Bishops’ proposals to provide prayers to bless same-sex unions in church — but with a last-minute clarification that their use would not contradict the Church’s current teaching on marriage. On the podcast this week, Francis Martin speaks to different Synod members to hear their reactions to the vote — from both those who welcome it and those who do not. Picture credit: Max Colson/Church Times Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two m...
Feb 10, 2023•36 min
The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, Rachel Mann, who has written this month’s book club essay about the book, is in conversation with Sarah Meyrick. The Inseparables is published by Vintage at £9.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.99); 978-1-78487-718-7. The Inseparables is an autobiographical novel that was never published in Simone de Beauvoir’s lifetime, as it was considered too intimate for publication at the time ...
Feb 02, 2023•39 min
On the podcast this week, the writer and activist Symon Hill talks about protest and Christian faith. Symon was arrested on 11 September during the Proclamation of the King’s Accession in Oxford, after shouting “Who elected him?”. The charges against him were dropped earlier this month (News, 13 January). He talks on the podcast about the importance of the right to protest peacefully, as well as about why he believes that forms of non-violent direct action are often necessary in the pursuit of j...
Jan 27, 2023•26 min
On the podcast this week, the writer and comedian Cariad Lloyd talks about her new book, You Are Not Alone: A new way to grieve. The book is a distilliation of what she has learned through her award-winning podcast, Griefcast. “I think we don’t talk about death enough, basically,” she says. “Even if we’re better than we were, say, 50 years ago, we don’t give space to grief. We don’t allow people to be sad. We kind of expect people after a year, maybe two years, to stop going on about it, even if...
Jan 20, 2023•33 min
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, short stories by Omer Friedlander, is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, he talks to Susan Gray, who has written this month’s book club essay about the book (read it at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/books-arts/book-club) The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is a collection of 11 short stories. They are all set in modern-day Israel, transporting the reader to the lush orange groves in Jaffa, the arid Negev desert, ...
Jan 05, 2023•48 min
On the podcast this week, the Bishop of Maine, the Rt Revd Thomas James Brown, talks to Madeleine Davies about the American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Elizabeth Strout – many of whose books are set in the State of Maine, New England. They discuss, among other things, Strout’s depiction of the Puritan mindset, the challenges of small-town ministry, and how clergy might respond to the gossip that occurs in their communities. Bishop Brown also considers the comparison often made between Elizab...
Dec 16, 2022•29 min
This week, the Revd Michael Coren is interviewed about his book The Rebel Christ. The book is is published in the UK by Canterbury Press and is available to buy from the Church House Bookshop for the discounted price of £10.39. Michael is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, a contributing columnist for the Toronto Star, and the author of more than 18 books. He also writes regularly for publications such as the Globe and Mail, The New Statesman, and the Church Times. Once a high-profile fi...
Dec 08, 2022•32 min
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On this accompanying podcast, Dr Natalie K. Watson, who has written the Book Club essay about the book, talks to Sarah Meyrick. The book is published by Picador at £8.99 and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.09. Dr Natalie K. Watson is a theologian, writer, and editor, living in Peterborough. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tic...
Dec 01, 2022•37 min
On the podcast this week, James Runcie talks to Sarah Meyrick about his new memoir, Tell Me Good Things: On love, death and marriage. It tells the story of his love for his late wife, Marilyn Imrie, a drama director, singer, and artist, who died of motor neurone disease (MND) in August 2020. “It’s about grief, and love. And I hope it’s also about gratitude and thank fulness,” Runcie says. James Runcie is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and film-maker. He is the author of twelve novels inc...
Dec 01, 2022•32 min
On the podcast this week, the novelist Robert Harris talks to Susan Gray about his latest book, Act of Oblivion. The novel takes place in the aftermath of the English Civil War, and swings between Restoration England and pre-Independence, Puritan New England. “A huge manhunt was started: 59 people signed the death warrant of Charles I, and there were about 30 left alive,” Harris says. “They were wanted, together with anyone who had sat as a judge on the King. A manhunt would make good structure ...
Nov 25, 2022•36 min
On the podcast this week, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams considers the significance of the Christian hope of a new heaven and a new earth. The talk was delivered this week in St Martin-in-the-Fields, in central London, as part of its autumn lecture series, “What am I living for?”, in partnership with the Church Times. The next lecture in the series, on Monday 21 November, is by Grayson Perry, and is on the theme of art. Book tickets at https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/wh...
Nov 17, 2022•41 min
The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, he talks to Sarah Meyrick, who has written this month’s Book Club essay about the memoir. The book, which won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography, is published by Vintage and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the nex...
Nov 03, 2022•28 min
On the podcast this week, Jo Swinney talks to Sarah Meyrick about A Place at The Table: Faith, hope and hospitality. The book is a joint project with Jo’s late mother, Miranda Harris, who died suddenly in October 2019. Mrs Harris and her husband, Peter, founded the Christian conservation charity A Rocha International. In an age when loneliness and isolation have reached unprecedented levels, the book calls for Christians to embrace the practice of hospitality — which can be simpler and more prof...
Oct 21, 2022•26 min
This week’s podcast features talks from the final of the Theology Slam 2022, which took place on 27 September in St Edmund Roundhay, in Leeds, as part of the HeartEdge conference “Humbler Church, Bigger God”. Theology Slam is a competition to find engaging young voices who think theologically about the contemporary world. Its organised jointly by the Church Times, SCM Press, and HeartEdge. The first finalist to speak is Alex Clare-Young, a pioneer minister in the United Reformed Church, currentl...
Oct 13, 2022•30 min
To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek is the choice for this month's Church Times Book Club - and on the podcast this week, the author speaks to Rachel Mann (who has written this month's Book Club essay about it). The book is published by Canongate and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in F...
Oct 06, 2022•40 min
On the podcast this week, Matt Rowland Hill talks to Sarah Meyrick about his critically acclaimed memoir, Original Sins. The book tells the story of growing up as the son of an Evangelical Baptist minister in South Wales and then Leighton Buzzard, fraught with bitter family conflict and fear of damnation. After rejecting religion in his late teens , he became addicted to crack and heroin, eventually being set on the path to recovery with the help of a Christian rehab charity. “They had a differe...
Sep 29, 2022•36 min
