Some Monday Readings - May 11, 2026

Revolting England – Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Not-so-bookish thoughts about book clubs – Kelly Belmonte at Bandersnatch Books.

 

Serious Reading Was Always a Minority Sport – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

Back When the Pulitzer Meant Something – Liel Leibovitz at The Free Press.

 

When You Hear Crickets – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The Spitalfields Roman Woman – Spitalfields Life.

 

The Royal Festival Hall at 75 – A London Inheritance.

 

The Gratitude Shift – Melissa Edgington at Your Mom Has a Blog.

 

Photograph by Clay Banks via Unsplash. Used with permission.

"Forgotten Churches" by Luke Sherlock

When we’ve gone to England, we’ve always made sure to visit churches and church buildings, because it is in these buildings where history comes alive. 

All Hallows by the Tower is likely overlooked by most visitors, but it shouldn’t be. You follow the short walking tour, and you discover the window blown out during the Blitz, the Saxon arch, the Roman cobblestones, and even the Tower from which Admiral Penn (William’s father) stood with Samuel Pepys and watched the great Fire of London in 1666. Or St. Bride’s on Fleet Street, the “Journalists church,” rebuilt after World War II to Sir. Christopher Wren’s original design, including the famous steeple which has inspired wedding cakes the world over.

 

The churches of London aren’t only Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. And you can’t go anywhere in England without coming across a church, even in the smallest hamlets that you pass and see from the train window. More than 12,500 are listed by Historic England, not all still functioning churches but still serving a function. 

It is these churches that are the focus of Forgotten Churches: Exploring England’s Hidden Treasures by Luke Sherlock. Churches are something of a serious avocation for Sherlock, who has visited them all over England. They tell the story of England’s past; one day, they might tell of it future. 

 

Sherlock considers the past of these churches; many of them date back to Anglo-Saxon and late medieval times.  But he also looks their architecture, their current uses, unique characteristics, and people associated with them. Most of them can only be reached by automobile; Sherlock often took trains, caught taxis, or just walked to visit them. The 71 churches he describes speak mostly to town and village life, as well as the very different times when they were built. 

 

Each entry is relatively short; Sherlock doesn’t give you every fact and figure or tell the full, complete history of each church. Yet he writes with respect and almost reverently; he knows what these churches represent, and he is ever mindful of the place they occupy in England’s history. 

 

Five of the churches are in London; I’ve visited two of them. 

 

The Round Tower of Temple Church

The Temple Church was largely destroyed during the Blitz in World War II, but it was beautifully and faithfully reconstructed. The tombs of knights are in the entrance of the nave area, entered after you walk through the church’s domed round tower. The church dates to 1162, and it was here that the Magna Carta was negotiated. It’s considered to be the birthplace of American law as well. The church’s round tower is modelled after that of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem; the Knights Templar intended it to be a “recreation of the holiest Christian pilgrimage sites on English soil,” Sherlock says.

 

St. John’s Chapel is in the White Tower of the Tower of London. I’d first seen n in 1983; forty years passed before I saw it again, this time with my youngest son. Commissioned by Wiliam the Conqueror “as the spiritual heart of his glistening, domineering White Tower,” Sherlock writes, it was “eccelesiastical architecture to make a statement.” When you’ve seen the big cathedrals and abbeys and even some of the more recent churches, St. John’s Chapel seems almost austere, stripped bare of all the ornaments, stained glass, and decorations. 

 

Luke Sherlock

Sherlock is a writer and owner of Sherlock & Pages, a bookshop in Frome, Somerset in England. He has a passion for landscape, heritage, and art. He reports (and photographs) his travels across England on Instagram under @englishpilgrim. 

 

You might expect Forgotten Churches to be an oversized, coffee-table took with lavish photographs. But it is 6 ½ by 8 ½ inches, and instead of photographs, it is fully illustrated with beautiful drawings by Ioana Pioaru, in keeping with the book’s reverent tone. It’s not intended to be a travel guide; you’ll need to look up your own directions to reach the various churches. Instead, it is a lovely collection of responses and reactions to some of England’s most visible (and oldest) architecture.

Top photograph: St. John's Chapel, White Tower, Tower of London.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Switch and the Clore: Modern Extensions to Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Holbourne – Andrew Eberlin at Photos, photographers and photobooks.

 

The Great American Travel Book – Thomas Swick at The American Scholar.

 

Worse than woke, Smithsonian art is bad – Gage Klipper at The Spectator World.

 

“Songs My Mother Taught Me,” by Antonin Dvorak – Debra Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Return of the Family Doctor – Brewer Eberly at Plough Magazine.

Poets and Poems: Gillian Allnutt and "wake"

Gillian Allnutt is one of those presences in British poetry. Since 1973, she’s taught English and creative writing, and through her career as a teacher added performing, newswriting, publishing, freelancing, and editing. I suspect her first love is poetry, though. She’s published several collections, served as the poetry editor for City Lights Magazine, and received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2016 for meritorious achievement in the field. 

I recently read her 2018 collection wake. (That’s not a typo; the “w” in the title is lower-cased.) 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

How to Fix the NIH – Joseph Marine at The Free Press.

 

Beloved Mystery Series, and Why They Are Successful – Lyn Squire at CrimeReads.

 

Fallow – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

Ukrainians Are Sick of the War. But We’re Not Allowed to Say It – Dmytro Filimonov at The Free Press. 

 

Lincoln’s Conservative Advisor: Attorney General Edward Bates by Mark A. Neels – Civil War Books and Authors.

"The Bone Chests" by Cat Jarman

December 1642: the English Civil War between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians is raging. 

The Parliamentarians occupy the city of Winchester and storm into the city cathedral.

 

The cathedral had been a fixture in the city since 1079, replacing a church building known as the Old Minster first built in 648. The Old Minster had housed the bodies of many Anglo-Saxon ruler until they were removed, the bones placed in 10 chests in the then-new cathedral. 

 

The Parliamentarians weren’t fond of relics, statues of saints, and stained glass. After wrecking much inside the cathedral, the soldiers turned their attention to the chests, which monks had placed high above the floor in the hope that they would be out of reach. They weren’t. Six of the chests were destroyed outright and the bones scattered. The remaining four were emptied. What stopped the full destruction was the appearance of the local people determined to protect what was left. Not surprisingly, the soldiers decided they were finished for the day. 

 

The great stained-glass window was wrecked by the solders launching the emptied bones through the glass.

 

The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons tells the story of what happened to the chests and the bones they contained. The author, Cat Jarman, is editor of British Archaeology Magazine, and tells that story, and she does a lot more. The chests become the mirror she holds to the Anglo-Saxon age, with the era’s kings and queens, the battles with the Vikings, the battles among themselves, and the role of Christianity and great cathedrals like Winchester. 

 

It's a captivating tale. Jarman organizes the story by the bone chests themselves, the four surviving chests and the two replicas built after the Restoration of 1660. She details the considerable forensic and archaeological work undertaken in Winchester as well as other, connected places (including Madgeburg, Germany). She describes how the bones were gradually gathered up and but back in the boxes, often in a jumble. Hundreds of years later, scientists examined the bones in an effort to determine which bones might belong to which ruler. Along the way, she provides the history of each ruler and the times they lived in.

 

Cat Jarman

Jarman is a bioarchaeologist and field archaeologist specializing in the Viking Age and also the Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Her studies include the use of isotope analysis, carbon dating, and DNA analysis. She previously published River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads. Jarman received her Ph.D. degree in Archaeology from the University of Bristol. Her thesis involved a forensic analysis of Viking Age burials, including a mass grave of 300 individuals. 

 

The Bone Chests is a fascinating study, not only of the times and people who ruled but also how archaeologists have worked to determine the bones’ identities.

 

Top photograph: the great west window of Winchester Cathedral. The shattered glass from 1642 was collected and made into a mosaic. Image from Wikipedia. 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Do We Owe Loyalty to Institutions? – David Deavel at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

The dangers of digital media – Samuel Walters at The Critic Magazine.

 

This Forgotten Valley – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian. 

 

The First and Best Writing Advice I Ever Received – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Poetry Prompt: O, Soul – Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Simon Armitage and "The Owl and the Nightingale"

The Owl and the Nightingale is one of the most famous poems to have emerged from medieval England. The story is straightforward. Two birds, a nightingale and an owl, face off across a clearing. The nightingale starts an argument that seems les an argument and more a stream of invective and insults aimed at the common owl (emphasis on “common”). The owl, taken aback by the verbal assault, gives back in kind, but she also seems to argue a more reasoned response. 

While reading this poem, it’s difficult not to imagine the two birds individually sporting colors of blue and red, one arguing from an elitist position and the other from that of the commoner. The only thing the nightingale doesn’t call the owl is “deplorable,” but you get the idea. Both birds make their arguments from Christian teaching; both constantly violate that teaching in how they argue. The nightingale, however, recognizes the merit in much of what the owl is saying, but is determined to yield no ground. The poem ends with both flying off to have the argument settled once and for all by Master Nicholas.

 

It’s the earliest example of debate poetry, sometimes called a verse contest, in Middle English. We know that the poem bears both Anglo-Saxon and French influences, which places it after the Norman Invasion of 1066. The poem is comprised of 1,800 lines written in iambic tetrameter, the most common poetic meter in English.

 

But from that point, the poem’s provenance gets murky. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"Innovation" by Peter Ackroyd

For England and Britain, it was a century that began with Victoria on the throne – the second longest reigning monarch – and ended with Elizabeth, now the longest reigning monarch. In between were two world wars, the rise of the Labour Party, the Great Depression, the decline of the old, landed aristocracy, the vote for women, the first woman prime minister, and social change on a scale previously unimaginable. Telling the story of England in the 20^th century is British author Peter Ackroyd, finishing his grand historical series with Innovation: The History of England Volume VI. 

The sheer breadth of this series is rather astonishing. Like he’s done with its predecessors, Innovation is written in a lively, comprehensive style, focusing on the political history of England while paying at least some attention to social and cultural. In other words, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones get sufficient attention, but don’t expect much detail. (Ackroyd also emphasizes that this is a history of England, not Britain; he includes information on Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland / Ireland only when they might be important to English history.)

 

Ackroyd’s England is familiar and yet it’s not. He fills in well-known stories with unexpected details, even as he paints with a broad brush. Winston Churchill is portrayed, failures and all (and he had his share of failures). He provides an account of each parliamentary election and keeps the story fast-paced enough so that it doesn’t become repetitious. Margaret Thatcher is treated with more balance that I expected; she was never popular with the literary and artistic elites in Britain and remains an object of ire. But Ackroyd gives her what she’s due; she revolutionized Britain and many have never forgiven her. 

 

Peter Ackroyd

The highlights of the work are the events leading up to World War II; how an entire generation became disillusioned after the first world war; how the music of the 1960s developed and became known worldwide; and how Thatcher faced down Argentina’s military junta in the Falklands.

 

The author is one of Britain’s most prolific popular historians. In addition to his history of England series, he’s also written biographies of Charles Dickens and the artist J.M.W. Turner, among several others; a history of London (and a history of London beneath the streets); and many other works. 

 

Innovation and the first five volumes in the series are what historians would call “popular history,” but they provide a solid overview of the history of England from prehistoric to contemporary times. His broad grasp of so much history is rather astonishing, and he shares it all. (And I keep wondering what his office must have looked like to accommodate all of the research.)

 

Related:

 

My review of Dominion by Peter Ackroyd.

 

My review of Revolution by Peter Ackroyd.

 

My review of Rebellion by Peter Ackroyd.

 

My review of Peter Ackroyd’s Tudors.

My review of Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation.

 

Reading Peter Ackroyd.

 

A Revolt over a Prayer Book.

"The City of London Murder" by Roy Lewis

Attorney Eric Ward, a former policeman who nearly lost his eyesight to glaucoma, is helping his wealthy wife make an acquisition of a Yorkshire firm. Well, helping isn’t exactly the right word. Ward knows his wife Anne doesn’t really need his help; she’s smart enough and capable enough to manage on her own, with the help of a young acquisition advisor.

The advisor, for his part, is indeed young, but he’s gained something of a reputation as an up-and-comer. He’s also engaged to a beautiful woman, who doesn’t seem as taken with the advisor as he is with her.

Ward is pulled into a hostile takeover defense (this is the 1980s, when such events were almost routine) as a compliance officer. The chairman of his investment banking firm is also part of the defense team, and a rather unorthodox strategy is put into effect. Ward suspects that there’s more to the plan than he’s been told, and that the defense team is slipping into a gray legal area at best and illegality at worst.

Then the advisor’s fiancée is brutally murdered, and the advisor is arrested. But like everything else when high finance is involved, there’s far more here than meets the eye.

Roy Lewis

The City of London Murder by British mystery writer Roy Lewis is the eighth in the Eric Ward mystery series. It’s a riveting tale of merger and acquisition, entrepreneurs slipping onto the wrong side of the legal fence, petty jealousies and rivalries, and murder. 

Lewis is the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.

The Eric Ward mysteries were first published in the 1980s and are now being republished. What you don’t ger are stories heavily dependent upon computers, mobile phones, and DNA analyses. And the author cleverly weaves the ongoing relationship between Ward and his wife into a significant piece of the story.

Lewis maintains his consistently high quality of storytelling with The City of London Murder. It’s been a delight to find and read these stories from 40 years ago.

Related:

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Farming Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Quayside Murder by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Diamond Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Geordie Murder by Roy Lewis.

The Shipping Murder by Roy Lewis.

“Cometh the Hour” by Annie Whitehead

Blame it on Petrarch.

The Italian scholar (1304-1374) is credited with coining the phrase “Dark Ages” to describe the period from the fall of the Roman Empire to the early Renaissance. The idea of “dark” (backward and violent) contrasted with the “light” of his own day. The term was especially popular during the so-called Enlightenment (roughly the 17^th-18^th century) which gave us both great learning and the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. It’s at least arguable which era was actually the darkest (and none of them may hold a candle to the death, destruction, and violence of the 20^th century). 

Historians today generally avoid using the term “Dark Ages,” but it persists in popular culture. In Britain, the period includes the departure of the Romans (about 400 A.D.), the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the Viking invasions, and the Norman Conquest, to about the time of Chaucer (14^th century). Some of the most familiar icons of British and English history were created during this period, including the Tower of London, the monumental castles, and the great church buildings like Westminster Abbey and the numerous cathedrals. 

It’s this era that historical fiction author and historian Annie Whitehead has focused upon for her books. Her novel To Be a Queen is set in the 870-918 A.D. timer period. Her history of Mercia is about one of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that dominated England for a few hundred years. She writes with deep insight of the era and the people, making extensive use of both the original documents that exist and scholarly research. 

Based on that same kind of in-depth research, Cometh the Hour tells the story of four kingdoms in the seventh century A.D. – Mercia, Bernicia/Northumberland, Deira, and East Anglia. And while it is largely a story of kings and their struggles against each other and often their own siblings, it is also a story of the women, who often had to run kingdoms while their husbands were off fighting (and the husbands are often off fighting). The various kingdoms in this period (and there were more than these four) seemed to stay in almost constant warfare, with a few brief years of peace in between. 

England about 600 A.D.

The major characters in the story are all historical figures. Because the story and the interaction between the characters is complex, Whitehead includes a helpful royal genealogy for each of the four kingdoms and a list of the major characters. She’s telling four primary stories; how they merge, diverge, interweave, and sometimes abruptly end are what make the genealogies and character lists so helpful.

And what stories she tells! Princesses used as political pawns, revenge for the deaths of fathers and sons, double-dealing and treachery, and the occasionally real love story all make for an absorbing read. This is also the period during which Christianity was making major inroads among the various Anglo-Saxon tribes, and Whitehead tells that story, too. Favorite characters are Penda, king of Mercia, and his wife Derwenna. Penda resists Christianity to the very end, even though he doesn’t oppose his subjects hearing and accepting the message, but he behaves as more of a Christian king than most of his believing peers in the other kingdoms.

Of particular note are the battle scenes. This author knows how to write a vivid, realistic battle scene. She does it so well that you find yourself ducking to miss the swing of a sword or an ax. 

Annie Whitehead

Whitehead, a member of the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Writers Association. She has published three novels set in Mercia: To Be a Queen (2013); Alvar the Kingmaker (2016); and Cometh the Hour (2017). Her non-fiction work, Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom, was published in 2018. Her books have won a number of prizes and recognitions, and she is a frequent contributor to anthologies on English history and a lecturer. She blogs at Casting Light upon the Shadow and Time Traveler.

Cometh the Hour is fiction, yes, but it is fiction that provides a factually based understanding of what actually happened during this period of English history. By the story’s end, you’ll come out with a deeper understanding of the times and a deeper appreciation for just how well Whitehead told her story. These ages won’t remain dark while we still have such great storytellers.

Related: 

To Be a Queen by Annie Whitehead.

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom by Annie Whitehead.

Top illustration: A stained glass window in Worcester Cathedral depicting the death of Penda at the Battle of Winwaed is 655 A.D., via Wikimedia Commons. Map of England in 600 also via Wikimedia Commons.

"The Sedleigh Hall Murder" by Roy Lewis

Eric Ward is what’s called an “articled clerk,” in training to become an attorney and working at a notable law firm in Newcastle. He’s also 40, when most articled clerks are half his age. Eric had been a policeman, and a good one, until pensioned out because he developed glaucoma. 

At the law firm, Eric does all the hard work for the principal partner’s son. The father suspects as much, and he begins to include Eric in visits to clients. Eric has also been handed an administrative case – disposition of an estate of a deceased client with no known survivors. He recognizes the client’s name – a man who went to prison years before for the murder of a local colonel. It looked like an open-and-shut case, until Eric begins to see anomalies, years after the man had been released from prison, took up a new life, and then died. And the anomalies are attached to a legal matter the firm is handling for a lord, a major landowner in Northumberland. Eric may be in the process of becoming an attorney, but he still has a lot of the policeman in him.

Roy Lewis

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by British author Roy Lewis tells the story of Eric ward and what he uncovers. It’s set about 1980, so there are no mobile phones, no computers, and no DNA analyses. It’s a top-notch mystery story, with a sympathetic hero struggling with the pain of glaucoma, a fascinating case to unravel, and even a slight touch of romance.

Lewis is the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine,The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England. 

The Sedleigh Hall Murder is a classic British mystery, as good as any I’ve read. Many of the Lewis mysteries were published 30 and 40 years ago, and kudos to Joffe Books for bringing them back.

Related:

My review of A Cotswolds Murderby Roy Lewis.

"Creatures of Dust" by Scott Hunter

It’s downright dangerous to be on the team of Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Moran of the Thames Valley Police. In Black December, one of his men experiences a gruesome kind of torture. In Creatures of Dust, policeman have heart attacks, are beaten almost to death by local villains, and even worse. 

Moran himself, having barely survived an automobile crash, is plagued by blackout periods and a noticeable limp. He’s seen his garage blown up (and people die) and he had barely escaped death at the hands of evildoers many times. 

Now he’s on the trail of a serial killer who’s seems to be targeting area Muslims. A young man is knifed to death; so is an IT consultant. Both are Muslims. And then a Catholic priest dies the same way in the confessional box. The killer isn’t just limiting himself to Muslims. The only anomaly was a killing that happened at the same time as the first – an undercover policewoman. And other departments want Moran well away from investigating her death, even to the point of taking over Moran’s murder investigations. Something smells fishy in the Thames Valley Police.

Scott Hunter

This is the second in the “Irish Detective” series by British author Scott Hunter. The series includes Black December, Creatures of Dust, Death Walks Behind You, A Crime for All Seasons (short stories), and Silent as the Dead. In addition to writing his crime fiction, Hunter is an IT consultant and musician. He lives with his family in England.

Criminal activity seems rampant in Thames Valley, both on the streets and in the police department. DCI Moran often finds his hands tied, but he always figures out a way to bring the guilty to justice. Even if a lot of his fellow police officers have to die along the way. Creatures of Dust is a fast-paced, anything-is-bound-to-happen-and-likely-will kind of story.

Related:

My review of Black Decemberby Scott Hunter.

'Defiant Joy' by Kevin Belmonte

Everything about G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) seems to have been oversized. He was famous for his physical size. His literary insights were recognized almost as soon as he began writing and publishing. He was considered a master of the paradox, and he was difficult to best in a debate. His interests ranged from detective fiction to Catholic saints, and he is still unsurpassed for his understanding of Charles Dickens. 

I first “met” Chesterton via his Father Brown mystery stories. Beginning in 1911 and continuing until his death in 1936, Chesterton wrote 53 of the stories. Over the years, the priestly detective has been featured in numerous film, radio, and television adaptations, and even in manga. But the stories are really only an introduction to the Broader Chesterton, and they served me as a bridge to his literary studies, biographies, and other works. 

His works are still widely read today, more than 80 years after his death. He was a philosophical adversary of George Bernard Shaw, but they were also close friends, and Shaw mourned his friend’s death. Chesterton has a more than significant influence on C.S. Lewis, and Lewis acknowledged that it was reading Chesterton that started him down the road to faith. A thriving Chesterton Societystill exists today, comprised of his admirers from around the world. And Chesterton still sounds contemporary; the issues he debated and confronted are similar to the issues of our own day.

Biographies have been written over the years, most notably by Garry Wills in the 1961 Chesterton. Writer Kevin Belmonte, in Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G.K. Chesterton, has written a literary biography that focuses less on the details of Chesterton’s life and more on his major works. It’s an excellent introduction, originally published in 2011.

Belmonte tells his story chronologically, and tells the main facts of the man’s life, but he focuses on Chesterton’s works. We’re introduced to his journalism, of which there was a prodigious amount; the literary studies that first captured the critics’ praise; his book entitled Heretics; his deep understanding of Dickens; Orthodoxy, one of his most famous books; the Father Brown mysteries; his famous poem of England, The Ballad of the White Horse; his biographies of Chaucer, St. Francis, and St. Thomas Aquinas; and his account of his travels in North America, What I Saw in America. 

Belmonte provides summary of the works as well as the critical responses, setting each in its historical and literary context. He allows Chesterton and his critics (good and bad) to speak for themselves, quoting long passages of reviews and Chesterton’s responses. In short, Defiant Joy is everything you hope a literary biography to be, creating an understanding of an important literary and cultural influence who was nothing short of brilliant.

Kevin Belmonte

Belmonte received his B.A. degree in English from Gordon College, an M.A. degree in Church History from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and an M.A. degree in American and New England Studies from the University of Southern Maine. He works include D.L. Moody: A Life: Innovator, Evangelist, World Changer; A Year with G.K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit and Wonder; William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity (with Charles Colson); The Quotable Chesterton; A.J. Gordon: An Epic Journey of Faith and Pioneering Vision; Miraculous: A Fascinating History of Signs, Wonders and Miracles; A Journey through the Life of William Wilberforce; John Bunyan; and Called to a Different Purpose: The Story of Robert Fulton and His Vision for Web Industries.

Defiant Joy provides great insight into the works of one of the most original minds of modern times. It’s an excellent reference, worth reading again and again, and has already inspired me to go back and reread my favorite Chesterton works.

"Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War"

I have a thing for exhibition catalogs. It drives my wife crazy, especially if the exhibition is in another country or city and we’re flying back home. All those books to pack! But I’ll usually buy the book that accompanies an exhibition, especially if it’s something I’ve really enjoyed. Or, I’ll buy the book for an exhibition I haven’t seen but would really like to see, like the current Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibitionat the British Library in London.

The book for the exhibition, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, is a big one. It’s edited by Claire Breay, head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the British Library, and Joanna Story, professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester. It includes an introduction and five essays, followed by almost 300 catalog pages tracking the 11 sections of the exhibition.

The essays cover the relationships between Anglo-Saxon England the continent; language, learning, and literature; interactions with Ireland; the emergence of a kingdom of England; and conquests and continuities. The essay authors are all experts in their fields and provide an overall summary of the Anglo-Saxon period.

The catalog section includes origins, or where the Anglo-Saxons came from; the kingdoms that were established and how Christianity gained a position among them; the kingdom of Mercia and its neighbors; the rise of the West Saxons; the emergence of England; language and literature; natural science; reforming the kingdom and the church; music; art; and the conquests of the 11^thcentury (the Norman Conquest of 1066 was only the last of several). 

Authors of the period provided some of the best-known works of literature in what eventually developed as the English language. The Venerable Bede finished his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731 A.D., and an unknown author created the epic poem Beowulf about a century later. The exhibition manuscripts are few; some 90 percent of the surviving Old English poetry are included (some six documents). But its writings and poetry like these that drove the development of Old English well into the time of Chaucer and influenced Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible. 

At least two themes of special note emerge from the essays and catalog descriptions. 

First, while some still refer to this period as the “Dark Ages,” they were anything but that. There were repeated warfare and invasions, and the Vikings helped keep things upended for the last 200 years of Anglo-Saxon history (William the Conqueror and his Normans were themselves descended from Vikings). But a rich literary life was maintained at various palace courts and especially the monasteries; this was the great period of illustrated manuscripts.

Second, the influence of religion was enormous, and likely because it provided some stability in an unstable time. The Roman Catholic Church was the church universal in Anglo-Saxon England, and while kingdoms emerged and disappeared, and Danes and Norsemen and others were always available for sacking and conquest, the church not only lasted but thrived.

Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms is a big, beautiful book, rather lavishly illustrated, displaying important artifacts and manuscripts from a formative period for British history and the English language.

Related: 

Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom by Annie Whitehead.

1066: What Fates Impose – a novel by G.K. Holloway.

Glass Island – a novel by Gareth Griffith.

Top illustration: A feasting scene from the Bayeux Tapestry. Bottom illustration: the Domesday Book, the earliest surviving public record in Britain.