Paris Geller and the Chunks of Iron: On the Uses of Unlikeability in Fiction
There’s a kind of character in fiction which my wife refers to as “a Paris”, and I call “a block …
Author Archives: quiteirregular
Spectral Authority: the Presence of Shakespeare in Biblical Scholarship
The journal Christianity and Literature has just published an article by me, entitled “Spectral Authority: The Presence of Shakespeare in …
Doctrine, Mission and Vocation in Samuel Wells’ “What Anglicans Believe”
I was recently given a copy of Samuel Wells’ excellent book What Anglicans Believe: An Introduction. It’s well worth a …
Review: “Murder to Music” by Margaret Newman
Murder to Music was published in 1959, the first novel of a promising detective novelist who apparently then left the …
A slow stroll through Narnia: re-reading “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”
Over the last few months I’ve been reading through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, chapter by chapter, and …
Preaching the rest of the year: On Trinity Sunday sermons
As Trinity Sunday comes over the horizon of the liturgical year, a familiar nervousness sets in amongst those who observe …
Dante in Lent: A sermon for the second Sunday of Lent
I don’t know how you are with the liturgical calendar. I’m afraid I’m one of those people who feels the …
Holy play: A sermon for Candlemas
The Christian Church has often had a difficult and vexed relationship with the theatre, over the centuries. On the one …
On the northern fringes: a sermon for Epiphany
In the second century, Sant Irenaeus wrote one of my favourite books, a theological treatise called Against the Heresies. At …
Guns in the Vicarage: On the Textual Criticism of Detective Fiction
Textual criticism isn’t a discipline often employed in the study of detective fiction, as far as I know. The establishing …
