“Ship Over Your Trinkets and Be Packing, You Papists”

The Langdale Rosary: A Medieval Survivor  I began researching this post in October, the month of the Holy Rosary. (As you can see, it took me a while to write and finish, I went all-in on the start of my novel instead). But I was inspired by the month of the Holy Rosary to consider…

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My “Our Lady of Walsingham” Camino Miracle

Somewhere on the Camino Mention 'Our Lady of Walsingham' even simply, Walsingham, to many people in England today, and they will not know what you mean. Yet in medieval times this tiny, picturesque village in Norfolk was a heavyweight amongst the Holy Shrines of Christendom; a contender with the likes of Jerusalem, Nazareth, Rome, and…

The First Memory

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien The purpose of…

Praying with your Local Saint

The Litany of the Saints and Martyrs of England St George and the Dragon, woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (1501/4 I have many favourite saints, St Maximilian Kolbe, St Therese of Lisieux, St Joseph, St Giana Molla, to name but a few. These saints feel like my friends, and their intercession in my life has been powerful. There…

The Secret Life of the English Country House (Part 2)

Find Part 1 here. Harvington Hall The coronavirus lockdown has brought into sharp relief the necessity of the priesthood. Without priests, who will bury you? Who will marry you? Baptise your baby? Be with you in your hour of need? Minister the Sacraments?  So it was in the Reformation, and the many hundreds of years…

The Secret Life of the English Country House (Part 1)

Madresfield Court The English Country House fascinates me.  There is the obvious Downton Abbey attraction, the fascination of any place where an ensemble of people are kept in a confined space and expected to get on with one another.  There is their beauty; beautiful spaces, full of potential, inspire.  There is the fantasy element; I…

Ushaw’s Wooden Boards

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCAky_UDkbQ Mass in the trenches I recently had the opportunity to visit Ushaw College (in pre pandemic, normal life days). Ushaw is a continuation of the English College seminary in Douai, which had to return to England due to Catholic persecution during the French Revolution. France was a safe haven for English seminarians during the…

Have you heard of St Herbert’s Island?

My favourite place in the world is Keswick, in Cumbria. There, on the shores of Derwentwater you can look out across the water and see the humped, dragon-like ridge of Catbells, and further down to the misty peaks of the Jaws of Borrowdale.  There are four islands on the water. The largest is named after…

Thoughts on a Rededication in Lockdown

It was not the Rededication we had planned.  We did not gather in our cathedrals, churches or chapels. Our national Shrine at Walsingham was not packed with pilgrims. Instead, we lit candles in our homes, looked out on deserted streets, and watched online,  almost two weeks into a national lockdown and a global pandemic that…

Lingering Echoes

(Warning: This post contains very mild spoilers to the novel Brideshead Revisited). I'll start at the beginning. There are many beginnings I could choose from, but for this particular post I'll go back ten years, to the winter of 2009. I was nineteen, and I had just read Brideshead Revisited for the first time. From…