Showing results by author "John Arnold" in All Categories

There are many stories we can tell about the past, and we are not, perhaps, as free as we might imagine in our choice of which stories to tell or where those stories end. John Arnold's addition to Oxford's popular Very Short Introductions series is a stimulating essay about how people study and understand history.

“If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” - Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford upon Avon in late April 1565. He was one of eight children. Little is known about his life, but what is evident is the enormous contribution he has made to world literature. His writing was progressive, magnificent in scope and breathtaking in execution. His plays and sonnets helped enable the English language to speak with a voice unmatched by any other. William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, survived by his wife and two daughters. He was buried two days after his death in the chancel of the Holy Trinity church.

Willy and the Magic Penny is the story of a young lonely boy who ventures to the beach for a day of sand castle building, only to embark on a magical adventure involving kings, dragons, snakes, and princesses.

The Essay is a BBC Radio series exploring cultural topics. In these five episodes, I Confess: The Power of the Confession looks at the history of confessions, which links the legal world of Cicero to our own. In Episode one, Dr Kathryn Tempest of Roehampton University excavates the roots of one of the most powerful legal concepts of all time.