Ronan's Journal

When I were a lad … there was a stonking great bonfire on the Common near our house. Each November 5, the local Scouts would pile up the wood, toss on a Guy, and light the thing while we stood around in our parkas and wellies. If you drove around that night, the glow of fires would dance above the hedgerows and fields, fireworks cracking over head …

PETER VARDY’s new book is an admission to the new atheists that much religion is indeed bad, and that, rather than rush to defend faith, believers should use this criticism as an opportunity to root out the bad …

I have before me the souvenir issue of the Daily Telegraph, awash with the colour and joy that was the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. For me, a favourite image is not the balcony kiss or that dress, iconic though they already are; rather, it is the image of the mass of people on the Mall. In all its massive yet polite reverie, this image offers a strong contrast with another scene from yesterday’s news, namely that of angry Syrians tearing down a poster of President Assad. And so I am led to wonder: what is the secret of peaceful, consensual government?

At some point, your child needs to conquer their first mountain, and there is no better candidate than Cnicht in Snowdonia …

Given at boarders’ chapel, Loughborough Grammar School, 16.ii.11.

A reading from Zechariah 8:16-17

These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another, render in your gates…

… We have a tendency to judge things by the worst in them. For Syria, we condemn a whole people because of their government and the sins committed by a few of their Muslim brethren. We fail to recognise that we would fall by the same sword. I like to think that my lawyer friend remembers me as a friendly Englishman who enjoyed an evening of shared humanity with him, and not as the caricature (deserved or not) of an empire-hungry, Muslim-hating, morally decadent crusader that is a popular Arab view of the generic westerner…