Crucifixions and Resurrections of the Image by George Pattison

Can be found on Amazon 

Pattison has in his sight the (false?) dichotomy between Modern Art and Christianity. While many artists reject a religious faith or world-view, or possibly increasingly are indifferent to faith – one of a number of irrelevances that have not bearing on their work. However Pattison notes that “Context and reception must also be weighed, and the work's effects belong to the work, whatever the intention of the artist.” Therefore the meaning of a work can go beyond the understand of the artist, and so Pattison goes on to explore a range of artist's work in this spirit.

A book about Art without any illustrations does make it essential to be reading it within reach of a search engine to see the works that Pattison makes essential to his analysis.

More Empty Tabernacles by Michael Yelton

Published by the Anglo-Catholic History Society, Michael Yelton recounts the history of 12 London Churches – most of which have been demolished, all of which have ceased to be Anglican Churches.

Most, but not all, of these Churches were founded during the Victorian heights of the Anglo-Catholic movement, with its urgent and energetic sense of Mission to the urban poor. That these Churches were short lived can be accounted for by the confluence of two main developments. One is a lost of urgency and energy within the movement in the post-War years, the other was the de-population of many of the poorest districts in London as slums were replaced with suburban estates.

Yelton gives an account of the building, and any significant modifications that occurred to it, but he also gives an account of the Priests that lead these Churches, and it is here that the real colour and interest lies. For much of the period under consideration the Anglo-Catholic movement was marginalised within the Church of England (most of those considered here would fall at the “extreme” neo-Papist end of the Anglican spectrum) and so those that inhibited it were often eccentric – probably those without that tendency would have found their place closer to the mainstream of the Church.

Yelton does these Parishes the honour of remembering them, they burned brightly with the spirit of the Gospel, even if they burned briefly.

Messy by Tim Harford

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This is an insightful book, at one level liberating but at another uncomfortable.

There is a significant chunk of the book that deals with the functioning of organisations, there is a dominant trend for order and predictability within organisations. The message is that this can get you to “good” but rarely gets you to “great”.

Within education practices like the literacy hour raised the baseline, giving a solid structure that allowed less able teachers to perform well but for stronger teachers it is seen by many to have limited their potential. The same is true of chain restaurants, walk into any Pizza Express and you know what you are getting, walk into an independent Italian and you might get the best meal of your life, or the worst.

Tim Harford also points out the ways that targets that are set as a measurable proxy for performance quickly become the be all and end all and fail to work – how many organisations have set a performance indicator that all emails will be responded to within 24 hours, and then create an automated response that merely thanks you for your email to hit that target, with the meaningful response coming days or even weeks later if at all. The KPI is met, but whether a service is delivered remains in doubt.

The part of the book that sat less easily was about those who were successful through the deliberate creation of chaos. Once you know that most of the world operates on pre-scripted rule based protocols, and you have the guts to back yourself to deal better with off-script scenarios than your rivals, it is natural for you to set up those scenarios and trust your wits to get you through. That Harford's examples of this in action are Field-marshal Rommel, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Donald Trump proves it is effective but maybe leaves you wondering if winning is the same as virtue? Being a good person and being a “successful” person are not necessarily co-determinate.

The Greasy Poll by Mike Parker

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Most political memoirs are written by “successful” politicians, maybe after a fall from power, nevertheless there has been some period at the top. Therefore the memoir of a loser is in itself an interesting take.

As a follower, from afar, of Welsh life and politics I am clearly particularly drawn to this account of a Welsh aspect of the 2015 General Election, but I don't think that you need to have any particular interest in Wales to find the dynamics of a constituency campaign being played out – how the big picture of the election does, and in many ways does not, influence the local. It is also an intensely human story, and so I don't think you need to be a political nerd to engage with it either.

Mike Parker is honest, at times brutally honest, about Plaid, the party he was standing for. It gives clues about why Plaid is not riding on the crest of a wave in the same way as the SNP, but also perhaps why all parties are undergoing some level of existential crisis. How the SNP has seen a surge in support in the wave of a defeat in a referendum on its primary raison d'etre, UKIP possibly the reverse, and Labour's membership is seen by many to be growing in direct inverse to its electability are political puzzles equal to Plaid catch-22 to being too “small c” conservative to capture the anti-establishment vote, and yet too radical for many others.

Given the turning point of the tale is the dredging up of Mike Parker's past published writing makes me even more cautious that usual about putting writing what I am really thinking... His conclusion is a sad one, that writers are unwise, unable, to become politicians because there will always be something in their past that can be quoted out of context and torpedo them. But in the age of Twitter, we are not all writers now? What we once said in the pub we now publish online...

I would be deeply worried by the prospective politician who has never made an ill judge quip on Twitter, whose every move from the first utterance online, has been considered and calculated with a view to future electability. As Billy Joel once sang “And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts”. We complain that our politicians are out of touch with reality, and yet pounce on them when they betray that they are human... In so doing we get what we deserve?

Mike Parker's relationship to his party feels very real, he is loyal to his party but not blinkered to its failing. Enough of an outsider not to be consumed by its internal and self-validating bubble, a bubble that is likely to be true of all parties not just Plaid. His accounts of the hustings, where many are attended almost exclusively by the committed supporters of the various candidates, no one comes to listen, learn, and decide, but merely to cheer their guy (in most instances in this campaign all the candidates at the hustings were male). Rather than a debate they are in effect 4/5 simultaneous rallies occurring in the same physical space but without meaningful overlap.

It would seem that one of the challenges Mike articulates is the erosion of nuance, it is not just that he gets “better” at keeping to the script in his doorstep encounters, it asks if there a question about chicken and egg between message and medium?, the sound-bite existed before the 140 character limit of Twitter, but for whatever reason it seems clear that if you need a paragraph to explain your position you are unlikely to get traction with the current electorate. But while the message needs to be simple the world isn't.

All Creation Waits by Gayle Boss, Illustrations by David G. Klein

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This is a beautiful book, for Advent, with rich illustrations, and words carefully crafted. It is attentive to the natural world, each day a different animal is encountered, and in the encounter the divine glimpsed. A great resource for those keeping Advent, but one which would speak to you even if Christianity was absolutely not your tradition. A little gem :-)

Tales of the Shopocracy by John Barnie

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This is a tale of a family, “A portrait” of the writer's Father, biography rather than hagiography. That it is a portrait of his Father rather than his Mother when both feature equally in the narrative is because it is also an exploration John Barnie's masculinity. Within the Shopocracy there seemed to be a clear definition of what it was to be a man, for John roles were more fluid.

He finds that while on the surface his Father, and forefathers, conformed to societal expectations they were in their quite ways independent souls. That some of his rebellions were in fact conforming to type, he was more of a chip off the old block than he had imagined.

I found this a familiar trait, coming from a family that on face value is firmly bourgeoisie, and yet often at the outer edges of subversion. This quote perhaps sums it up “I have most sympathy with Anarchism, though I have no illusions that it could be made to work. In a democracy, if you vote a party into power, you have immediately to join the opposition.”

The Immortalization Commission by John Gray

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I found this a fascinating book at a number of different levels. It has the sub-title “Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death” a topic it treats in two halves. The first is about a range of Victorian and early Twentieth century spiritualists, the second about certain movements with the Soviet Union.

With the “spiritualists” the focus is on their attempts to communicate with the dead. They are an eccentric group of people, but perhaps typical of a segment of the upper middle classes in that era. John Gray goes through the various ways in which their investigations failed.

However for the most part it would appear these were not charlatan, when they reported receiving messages they were not, consciously, making things up. There was instead at play a rich mix of over-interpretation of phenomena and the power of sub-conscious suggestion. Gray points to the fact that the ways in which the sub-conscious was at play might actually be more interesting area of enquiry than if they had been genuinely getting messages from beyond the grave.

We are familiar with the phrase that History is written by the winners, but what I found particularly interesting is the way that this story shows that science too is written by the winners. Whether you go down as a visionary pioneer or a deluded alchemist is probably more down to luck than genius. Certainly in the period under examination, an era when science was still the domain of the educated amateur many of our scientific heroes lived lives of even greater eccentricity than those recalled here by Gray.

There is quiet a jump to the second half and the settling of the Soviet Union in the inter-war years. Communism would claim to be over-turn the world of religion and superstition in favour of science. It is strange to think of the Soviet Union as a place looking for immortality in a period when famines and political purges between them took the lives of millions. There was a strong trend toward eugenics, that many died was unproblematic if it gave greater opportunity for “the strong” to flourish. But also stripped of religious, or other beliefs, the human being was reduced to a machine. To be used and when broken down discarded. This was a fact, not a cause for moralising or sentiment.

While Gray is not an advocate for religion he is equally sceptical about the idolisation of “Science”.He says at one point that “if we know anything it is that most of the theories that prevail at anyone time are false.” I think there was once an episode of QI which was make up entirely of questions which had featured in earlier series, but for which new discoveries had in the intervening years invalidate the answer first given. “Scientific facts” are always provisional, waiting for the exception that remakes the theory

It is easy to look but and see others a deluded, but looking around and there are plenty of behaviours that continue to seek to “Cheat Death” The Soviet's embalmed Lenin's corpse, with Botox increasing number are embalmed themselves. And there is a downbeat about Gray's writing, we seem to find a way to turn every scientific advance into a weapon of some kind, from atom bombs to cyber attacks. He writes “None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.”

He ends by saying “The afterlife is like utopia, a place where no one wants to live. Without seasons nothing ripens and drops to the ground, the leaves never change their colours or the sky its vacant blue. Nothing dies, so nothing is born. … Seekers after immortality look for a way out of chaos; but they are part of that chaos, natural or divine. Immortality is only the dimming soul projected on to a blank screen.” when he could equally have concluded by quoting Ecclesiastes 3.