Articles

Blending Truth and Fiction – Review of ‘Taliesin’ and ‘Merlin’ by Stephen Lawhead

Blending Truth and Fiction – Review of ‘Taliesin’ and ‘Merlin’ by Stephen Lawhead

Blending fiction and truth can be fractious at times. Fiction is the story that hasn’t happened. Yet it can be true. We read stories of kings and hobbits, of ice witches and the Lion, and we feel the truth of our own world, of the great story of fall, of sin, of God’s redemption. These …

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Review – Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning, by Nigel Biggar

Review – Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning, by Nigel Biggar

This is an exemplary account of the complexities of the British Empire, a weighing of the moral standards and actions thought, permitted, and committed by those within it, and simply good, honest historical writing. I thoroughly recommend it. Colonialism was not one big mass that can be assigned blame, but something carried out for various …

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Review – Dune I and Dune II

Review – Dune I and Dune II

Watching Dune I there is an uncomfortable feeling of being fed a messiah story – irreverent to the real Messiah story, but perhaps with some analogy to Christ; or a science-fiction that takes disrespectfully from the true original, like so much of modern western culture, from Superman to Star Wars to The Matrix. These stories …

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Review – Matrix Resurrections

Review – Matrix Resurrections

(Spoilers ahead)    The difference between 1999 and 2022 can be seen in the difference between two Matrix films. The 1999 film could be heralded from multiple sides. As Neo Anderson (New Man) dodged bullets and bent space-time, it was possible to read the film from a Christian viewpoint: there was a vague Christ figure, …

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Review of Mothers Swam

Review of Mothers Swam

As I prepare the new edition of Mothers Swam for release, here’s one of my favourite reviews:   Mr. Richard Lw Bunning 5.0 out of 5 stars War, Survival and a Love that Transcends the Greatest of Cultural and Social Divides Reviewed in the United States on 23 January 2018 Verified Purchase Such a good read! …

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Hardy Society Journal

Hardy Society Journal

I have an article published in the spring edition of the Hardy Society Journal. It’s entitled ‘Geographical Narrative as Religiosity in Thomas Hardy’s “The Return of the Native”‘. You can read it online here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/48587072  

Fin de siècle – different settings

Fin de siècle – different settings

Posted on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/19387231-fin-de-si-cle—different-settings I’m writing this from China in the midst of the Coronavirus shutdown. I’ve just had a great holiday with my parents, starting in Singapore and travelling by cruise-ship up the coast. I saw the outbreak beginning on news reports, but it was another thing to arrive at HongKong airport. My flight …

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My Goodreads Blog

My Goodreads Blog

Over at Goodreads I have started an author’s blog. I’ll post there about the progress of my forthcoming novel, plus some thoughts on literature…   https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/19281327-starting-my-blog  

An Easter Poem

An Easter Poem

Jesus Arrested   He spoke and all torch fire, clubs weld, they collaps’d He stood man-God; brow bled in prayer this night. They soldiers, priests repeat the Name despatch’d Who’s he? All know; his Words through dark are sight   Jesus, Messiah, “I told you I Am he” How many dug seed wells then dirt …

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On Colonialism and Japan

On Colonialism and Japan

If you walk around Hiroshima in Japan you can experience a particular history. There is the one the ground beneath your feet speaks of in the form of absence: where once searing flames roared across the landscape, burning people, dogs, buildings, and possessions; where atomic winds blew through wooden houses and the people within them. …

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