There has been a massive outpouring of grief for Australian batting star Phil Hughes, who died having never regained consciousness after being hit on the top of the neck by a bouncer during an interstate game last Tuesday. The youth and promise of the cricketing star, who was by all accounts an extremely likeable young Read more
Seeing Australia from outside the island continent offers some very strange views from time to time. The outpouring of grief over the tragic accident that took the talented life of cricketer Phillip Hughes went global within a very short time. The home of cricket – England – was profuse in the time devoted to this Read more
During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions Read more
Last Friday morning, as I waited with my wife to greet Pope Francis after the 7 am Mass he says each day at the Santa Marta guesthouse, the strangeness of it all hit me. I was presenting a biography of the Pope to the Pope, and it had the bold title of The Great Reformer. Read more
My mum had superhuman powers when I was a kid. When I was about eight, a friend and I would play spies on our council estate. We’d use the poorly designed walkways as our lookout posts, and the labyrinth of corridors were the motorways for our high-speed chases. The fun we were having was obviously Read more
When Barack Obama vows to destroy Islamic State’s “brand of evil” and David Cameron declares that Islamic State (ISIS) is an “evil organisation” that must be obliterated, they are echoing Tony Blair’s judgment of Saddam Hussein: “But the man’s uniquely evil, isn’t he?” Blair made this observation in November 2002, four months before the invasion Read more
Bad religion. There’s a lot of it around still, though I am convinced there’s less of it (at least of the Christian variety) than there has been in the past. Even so, desperately bad religion dominates the daily paper, from Islamic fundamentalists filming grizzly decapitations, to the Catholic powers that be still trying to cover Read more
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gave a inspirational address on Monday at the Humanum conference at the Vatican on the complementarity of man and woman. It ranges over the whole history of marriage and concludes with a brilliant image: marriage turns “the prose of biology into the poetry of the human spirit”. I want this morning to Read more
Amid talk of whether Vladimir Putin would leave the G20 early and numerous reports of frosty encounters between him and other summit leaders, Western media coverage has generally operated from the sometimes forcefully expressed underlying assumption that the West is dealing with an erratic and dangerous dictator whose rule damages the once-great country he leads. Read more
There’s an article doing the rounds on Social Media at the moment. It is titled “Why I Didn’t Invite Family Or Friends To My Wedding”. And that’s great. But here’s why I did invite family and friends (and lots of them, we come from big families) to my our wedding. After four years of dating, Read more