Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

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The setting of this tale is fascinating, we think we know New York, but going back this far in the city's history is rare. For most the colonial history of what became the USA is overlooked – history began again with the War of Independence, yet here we have stepped back beyond that dividing line. It is a city (or rarely a town) that celebrates the King's Birthday and Bonfire Night – a little bit of England beyond the sea.

And into this carefully crafted setting Spufford provides a rich and well balanced cast of characters. As part of the twists of the plot we do not get to know the central character Smith completely, and perhaps because of this Spufford avoids becoming drawn exclusively to Smith and gives the other characters real weight as well.

The story is full of incident, a certain about of it humorous bordering on farce and yet somehow never ridiculous – you brought into it all. This allowed Spufford to side step the trap that many historical novels fall into, becoming so wrapped up in historical details that they become a lecture rather than a novel.

Running through the novel is the question “who is Smith?” - a question he asks himself as often as those around him. I will not reveal the answer, but I think the answer when you get to it still feels partial or provisional – what happens next after the narrative's end probably will be the true test of Smith – and we are left to wonder, left to weave, that answer for ourselves.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

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McEwan powerfully captures the sense of a world that is about to change but hasn't yet. Even in 1962 these young newly weds are effectively living in the 1940s. The teenager is yet to be invented, the summer of love not even on the horizon.

This is an exploration of possibilities that can not be realised, social norms weigh heavily on Florence and Edward. How hard it is to share you true thoughts and desires, even with those you are closest too.

McEwan probably doesn't need additional praise from me...

Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain Ed. Ronald Hutton

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This is a fascinating collection in a number of ways.

Firstly, particularly in the essays by Champion and by Easton, looking at ritual markings made in Churches and in domestic and other settings is the way that you see what you are looking for. Most people have avoided giving “meaning” to graffiti within Churches as it did not fit with their narrative of Christian belief, but look again with a different lens and there is so much meaning being inscribed on the walls (even if the exact meaning is not available to us).

The second point would be the continuity that a lot of the evidence points to, there are region variations and there are evolutions through time, but the picture is generally one characterised more by continuity than diversity. One of the questions this prompts is what caused these practices to endure – and a key part of the answer must be that at some level the practices “worked”. There must have been enough cases where people saw the desired outcome followed the action (even if scientists would point to coincidence rather than causation) to keep the practice alive. Also, as those of us who pray would be able to share, even in the absence of the desired outcome the fact that you have done something, be that making a charm or saying a prayer etc., brings a comfort.

Moving on from this, there is a wider point that there is a whole range of ritual and belief that is generally dismissed as “folk religion” which we should be much more attentive to. One of my questions would be the way these studies, despite seeing long histories in the practices described, set themselves as “historical” studies. There seems to be few connections made to contemporary practice. That the search “charms” returns over 2 million results in ebay would suggest there is a living tradition out there. The way that so many people engage with the act of lighting a candle in a church or cathedral quite separate from any structure of Christian belief that “the Church” would recognise is another token of this. It seems quiet clear to me that the beliefs of ordinary people are no more shaped by the “secular” orthodoxies of the likes of Dawkins and co than they were by Medieval priests and prelates.

Bishops by Michael Keilemans

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This book is made up of a number of distinct parts, and it is unfortunate that the last part is the weakest as that tends to mean that the impression you take away and remember is that weakness.

Chapters 1 to 5 give an historical overview, of Bishops in the early church and then, from Christianity arrival in Britain, with a focus on their development with in the UK.

Chapter 6 looks at the socio-economic make up of English Bishops between 1905 and 2005, and points to the fact that although there have been some shifting trends in levels of public school education and choice of University in reality the background of the bench of Bishops remains firmly establishment – and the elite end of the establishment at that.

Chapter 7 takes the same socio-economic look at Welsh Bishops, and the most interesting thing is probably that the disestablishment of the Church in Wales in 1920 has not fundamentally changed the leadership of the Church.

Chapter 8 looks as Scotland, and here there is a real contrast – while Anglicans in England and Wales are the Church of the establishment, even after “disestablishment” in Wales, fellow Episcopalians in Scotland are a minority and marginal Church, and so their Bishops are rather different characters.

Chapter 9 gives some supplemental remarks on contemporary thinking on the episcoal role.

Chapters 10 and 11 provide the results of questionnaire survey that Keulemans undertook of recently retired Bishops. Within this that Bishops rated “problematic clergy” as their biggest frustration and “pastoral care of clergy” as their biggest satisfaction is interesting, especially when coupled with a majority of Clergy saying they would turn to Bishop for help but only a minority being able to say they felt they had actually been helped by Bishop. This points to the dysfunctional relationships within the structures of the Church.

And finally Chapter 12 entitled “Where do we go from here?” which lacked any meaningful grounding in the preceding evidence base presented and unfortunately is little more than an opinionated rant.

Limestone Man by Robert Minhinnick

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Minhinnick writes prose with a strong sense of poetry, powerful imagery, but also the layering on meaning, the hint, the metaphor, the illusion as much as the allusion. The counterpoints of south Wales and Australia are both given an air of simultaneous authenticity and unreality.

This is a book running across multiple chronologies and geographies, and even when you are in one chronology you are having a flash back to another. Therefore there is nothing recognisable as a narrative arch – but I don't think that is the point.

The heart of the novel seems to be the question “what happened to Lulu?” but it is a question that is never remotely answered. (One begins to wonder did Lulu ever exist? Did anyone exist for that matter?)

The central character Richard muses “ As ever, we wondered whether there was anyone left who wasn't phoney. Because we were the real thing. Weren't we? We were the last of the prue. The founders of a new age.”

And yet you have the sense that Richard is the biggest phoney of the lot – maybe that is the only way you can ever actually live by the saying “be the change you wish to see”, you have to pretend the world is a better place than it is, pretend that you are a better person than you really are, and hope somewhere along the line reality catches up?

The Greatest Need, Biography of Lily Tobias by Jasmine Donahaye

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In exploring the life of writer and campaigner Lily Tobias, Donahaye also explores both Welsh and Israeli identities. To be engrossed in the biography of a writer whose work I have never read demonstrates the skill of Donahaye.

The very concept of being an “Israeli” is something that comes into being during Lily Tobias' life. When she first leaves Wales she moves to Palestine, she is a British (Welsh) Jew living in Palestine. When she returns from wartime exile in South Africa it is to Israel she “returns” to – although while she never lived permanently in Britain again she never gave up her British Citizenship, so perhaps at some levels never become an Israeli.

In her early live, Lily's experience of being a Welsh Jew Women is one of multi-layered “minorities” (Women have never been a numerical minority but the early 20^th Century was a society essentially structured as if they were...).

The violent death of her husband in Palestine very clearly shaped the whole of the rest of her life, a reminder of how long violence can have a hold over a person, and in a land of such violence, how very very long the process of healing will be even once peace is achieved.

The shift from her early pacifism to later belief in “just war” in defence of the Jewish homeland, a transition for which her husband's murder was the main catalysis if not necessary the only cause, is a sad one. How she would have responded to intensified conflict between Israeli and Palestinians in the decades since her death (in 1984) can only ever be speculation.

Donahaye gives a sympathetic but not an airbrushed account of Lily's life, and is willing to point out that not all her views sit that easily in contemporary contexts, but she was a women of her time, and her views are understandable if where we might now find them difficult to defend.

Celebrating Christian Initiation by Simon Jones

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This is an example of the real strength of the Alcuin Club, it provides a truly comprehensive guide to the current liturgical provision for Baptism, and other rites of initiation, within the Church of England. It provides a mix of theological reflection and practical guidance.

There are a lot of “how to” guides written, but they generally look to innovate without providing the baseline practice. This guide helps us understand what the ordinary practice of Baptism should be like, what it should be like when it is at its best. In many cases I tend to feel that we feel the need to innovate more because we do the ordinary badly rather than because the ordinary can not provide for the community or people we wish to engage.

Also I would suggest that we mostly find things within the liturgy cold or clunky because we have failed to understand their purpose – and if we (those engaged in preparing and leading the liturgy) haven't understood why we are doing things, what chance do those coming to receive the liturgy have. I don't think that an encounter with the liturgy depends on any prior theological knowledge or understanding – if liturgy has integrity it should be self-explanatory (and by that I definitely do not mean that each liturgical action should be explained – meaning should be communicated through the action not separate from it – much like jokes, liturgy you “have” to explain has essentially failed).