Inventing Language: As a result of his insatiable love of words, Ronald started to invent his own languages. Some children have rudimentary private languages that they like to share together. This was what Ronald’s cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon had done. They now lived outside Birmingham at Barnt Green, the neighbouring village to Rednal, andContinue reading “J. R. R. Tolkien & Birmingham; the Formative Years, 1896-1916: Part Two (1908-16) – ‘Lang.’, Lore & Love.”
Category Archives: France
Orbán & Fidesz versus Soros, et. al: Whose Values? -The Continuing Confrontation.
Extract from a Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the 31st Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp, 23 July 2022, Tusnádfürdő [Băile Tuşnad]: We have managed to separate our big debate on the whole gender issue from the debate on EU money, and the two are now moving forward on separate tracks. HereContinue reading “Orbán & Fidesz versus Soros, et. al: Whose Values? -The Continuing Confrontation.”
A Gentle Gulliver – Warwickshire Adventures & Sojourns
Mooching with Seymour Henry: Forty years ago this summer (2022), my grandfather, Seymour Henry Gulliver, died aged eighty-two. He was born at the beginning of the twentieth century at Ufton-on-the-Hill, Warwickshire, the seventh child and one of the younger sons of a large family of thirteen children, eleven of whom survived into adulthood. Seymour wasContinue reading “A Gentle Gulliver – Warwickshire Adventures & Sojourns”
Britain, Europe and The World in 1937: A Moment in History Repeating itself? Part Two
‘Special Operations’, 2022 & April 1937- March 1938: Just as the so-called Russian ‘Special Operation’ which began on 24th February 2022, did not represent the beginning of War in Ukraine, the invasion of its sovereign territory having commenced in 2014, so too, no single event in 1937 or 1938 represented the beginning of war inContinue reading “Britain, Europe and The World in 1937: A Moment in History Repeating itself? Part Two”
Britain, Europe and The World in 1937: A Moment in History Repeating itself? Part One
Democracy and Dictatorship – 2022 & 1922-1937: Beginning his keynote address on Russia’s War on Ukraine on 28th June 2022, the newly-commissioned Head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, spoke of the similarity of the events of 1937 in Europe to the continuing and impending events of 2022 in the central-eastern part ofContinue reading “Britain, Europe and The World in 1937: A Moment in History Repeating itself? Part One”
Tolkien’s Shire: From Middle England to Middle-earth – People, Places & Past Times.
Sarehole as Hobbiton: J.R.R. Tolkien lived near Sarehole Mill as a child in what was then a Worcestershire village and is now part of the Hall Green district of Birmingham. Together with the neighbouring Moseley Bog, the Sarehole area inspired the Tolkien stories of Middle-earth. The Tolkien Trail – Late Victorian & Edwardian Birmingham. Birmingham’sContinue reading “Tolkien’s Shire: From Middle England to Middle-earth – People, Places & Past Times.”
Who were the Huguenots? Currents of Cultural & Linguistic Change in France & Early Modern Europe.
Pictured above are French Protestants at Lyons Temple service, which was converted from an ordinary house. The hatted preacher is timed by an hourglass, and the two sexes are seated mainly in separate parts of the temple. Introduction – A Retrospective on Genocide & Deculturation: The word ‘genocide’ is essentially a term relating to eventsContinue reading “Who were the Huguenots? Currents of Cultural & Linguistic Change in France & Early Modern Europe.”
Who are the Ukrainians? Mythology & History, Part II: 1801-2001 – From Napoleon’s Empire to end of Empires?
Putin’s Perverse & Very Unorthodox History: In a letter of 10th March, H.H. Patriarch Kirill ‘of Moscow and all Russia’ replied to a letter sent on 2nd March by World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca asking the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church to mediate so that theContinue reading “Who are the Ukrainians? Mythology & History, Part II: 1801-2001 – From Napoleon’s Empire to end of Empires?”
The Enlightenment & Eighteenth-Century Rationalist Critics of the Bible: A Supplementary Summary.
For Calvinists at the time, as for many other conservative theologians since Spinoza, his role has been seen as purely destructive, as that of one who undermined the authority and inspiration of the biblical text and laid the foundation for Enlightenment scepticism about the Bible – the scepticism of the French philosophers, Voltaire (1694-1778) RousseauContinue reading “The Enlightenment & Eighteenth-Century Rationalist Critics of the Bible: A Supplementary Summary.”
Scenes from Baptist History: Persecution of the Puritans, Evangelical Revival & William Carey, 1662-1812.
Persecution of All ‘Nonconformists’, 1662-87: It was not until 1687 that the dissenting or ‘nonconformist’ churches felt able to look back upon ye Times of our late Troubles since the Act of Uniformity in 1662 had taken away the relative toleration they had experienced in the Interregnum. The Presbyterian minister Richard Baxter (1615-91) had takenContinue reading “Scenes from Baptist History: Persecution of the Puritans, Evangelical Revival & William Carey, 1662-1812.”
Andrew James 