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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.com.au | Damian Thompson
This is an excerpt from the latest episode of the Holy Smoke podcast with Damian Thompson, which you can find at the bottom of this page:The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is back in the news following his interview this week with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. The interview – his first since he resigned last November – was clearly Welby’s attempt to draw a line under the abuse scandal that cost him his job.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Damian Thompson
This is an excerpt from the latest episode of the Holy Smoke podcast with Damian Thompson, which you can find at the bottom of this page:The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is back in the news following his interview this week with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. The interview – his first since he resigned last November – was clearly Welby’s attempt to draw a line under the abuse scandal that cost him his job.
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3 weeks ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Damian Thompson
This is an excerpt from the latest episode of the Holy Smoke podcast with Damian Thompson, which you can find at the bottom of this page:It’s emerged that [Pope Francis is] going to be kept in isolation on the second floor of Santa Marta for at least two months, in what is, in effect, a hospital suite.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Derek VanBuskirk |Max Jeffery |Damian Thompson |Ben Domenech
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz spoke to the press this afternoon for the first time since the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg described how Waltz had inadvertently added him to a Signal groupchat in which air strikes on Yemen were planned. Walz claimed that he’d “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Goldberg. The only problem: Goldberg says in his report that the pair has met before. So who’s lying?
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Damian Thompson |Piers Morgan |Freddy Gray |Magdalene Taylor
Last Sunday the Vatican released the first photograph of Pope Francis since his ordeal began. He was wearing a stole around his neck, indicating that he had concelebrated mass in the chapel of the Gemelli hospital. Admittedly, all he had to do was raise his hand and whisper a few words of consecration, but it would have been impossible to take such a photo a week earlier, when Vatican-watchers were checking their phones hourly to discover whether the See of Peter had become vacant.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Damian Thompson
Text size Small Medium Large Line Spacing Compact Normal Spacious Comments Last Sunday the Vatican released the first photograph of Pope Francis since his ordeal began. He was wearing a stole around his neck, indicating that he had concelebrated mass in the chapel of the Gemelli hospital. Admittedly, all he had to do was raise his hand and whisper a few words of consecration, but it would have been impossible to take such a photo a week earlier, when Vatican-watchers were checking their...
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Damian Thompson
Last Sunday the Vatican released the first photograph of Pope Francis since his ordeal began. He was wearing a stole around his neck, indicating that he had concelebrated mass in the chapel of the Gemelli hospital. Admittedly, all he had to do was raise his hand and whisper a few words of consecration, but it would have been impossible to take such a photo a week earlier, when Vatican-watchers were checking their phones hourly to discover whether the See of Peter had become vacant.
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1 month ago | 
thespectator.com | Damian Thompson |Michael Hann |Mathew Lyons |Anne Daniel
Three projects shedding light on the sacred music of J.S. Bach are nearing completion. The first consists of an epic twenty-five-year project to record all the composer’s vocal works — passions, masses, motets and 200-odd cantatas — in electrifying performances supplemented by lectures and workshops. At the helm is a Swiss choral conductor renowned for his improvisatory skills — and surely the only baroque specialist to have played Sidney Bechet on a chamber organ.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.co.uk | Damian Thompson
The photograph on the cover of Jessica Duchen’s magnificent new biography of Dame Myra Hess shows a statuesque lady sitting at the keyboard, hair swept back into the neatest of buns. Add a pair of half-moon spectacles and she could be Dr Evadne Hinge, accompanist to Dame Hilda Bracket. This isn’t to imply that Dame Myra looked like a man in drag, but then neither did the ‘Dear Ladies’ played by George Logan and Patrick Fyffe, some of whose fans thought the singing spinsters actually were women.
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1 month ago | 
spectator.com.au | Damian Thompson
The photograph on the cover of Jessica Duchen’s magnificent new biography of Dame Myra Hess shows a statuesque lady sitting at the keyboard, hair swept back into the neatest of buns. Add a pair of half-moon spectacles and she could be Dr Evadne Hinge, accompanist to Dame Hilda Bracket. This isn’t to imply that Dame Myra looked like a man in drag, but then neither did the ‘Dear Ladies’ played by George Logan and Patrick Fyffe, some of whose fans thought the singing spinsters actually were women.
