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Dec 28, 2024 | 
ft.com | Fergus Butler-Gallie
Christmas in the Cotswolds used to be a quiet affair.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
the-fence.com | Fergus Butler-Gallie
A visit to the oldest undertakers in London, who have been in operation since the Battle of Trafalgar. ‘There’s a lot that can be blamed on David Bowie.’ Tom France speaks with an accent so distinctly Lahn-dan that I am absolutely prepared to believe him on this. But Tom doesn’t detail the other things that might be blamed on Bowie. While those rumours about underage groupies might be on his agenda, Tom is interested in only one area of Bowie’s cultural legacy: the no-frills funeral.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
engelsbergideas.com | Fergus Butler-Gallie
The ‘Spooky Season’, another mighty American cultural export, omits half the story of the New England town that defines its aesthetic. Fake gravestones litter the neat gardens of suburban streets. Plastic skeletons hang from the branches of trees decked in the colours of the New England Fall. Outlines of stooped and hook-nosed women flying on brooms twist in the gentle breeze. This is American Halloween, in its aesthetic and cultural homeland.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
telegraph.co.uk | Fergus Butler-Gallie
Historic churches may have to close if a long-running tax relief scheme is scrapped Credit: Alex Wright As I stood outside church on Sunday, allowing the unseasonably warm Autumn breeze to billow a little in my surplice, I made small talk with the congregation as they trooped out into the sunshine. “See you soon” I said to one departing couple. “Yes”, they replied, “we’ll be here on Wednesday. Praying!” I tried to work out whether they had miscalculated the date for All Saints day or had a...
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Jul 26, 2024 | 
thetimes.com | Fergus Butler-Gallie
Whenever I see Robin Askwith, I think of St Augustine. I freely admit I might be the only one to do so, but I came across both of them, and their Confessions, at roughly the same time in my teens. I remain a fan of both. Whereas with Augustine I plodded through his description of his youth and sexual adventures therein courtesy of a battered Penguin edition, my first encounter of Askwith was when I saw his bum.
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Jul 11, 2024 | 
churchtimes.co.uk | Fergus Butler-Gallie
Hotel theologyOUTSIDE the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, in the Czech Republic, I had a glimpse of heaven. Not the vista down the spa colonnade, as close to my own sense of Elysium as that might be; nor was it the ambrosial vanilla éclair to which my greedy eyes were drawn, plump and perfect though it was, on the Pupp-branded chinaware. No, the vision glorious was provided by a scattering of names written, not in the Book of Life, but on brass plaques affixed to the forecourt of the hotel.
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Jun 29, 2024 | 
spectator.com.au | Fergus Butler-Gallie
The Church of England is flogging off Dick Whittington. No, this isn’t an innuendo or a twist from a pantomime, but reality. The burial place of the mayor and cat enthusiast, St Michael Paternoster Royal, is being sold off as an office. The people behind this act are the Diocese of London, who bought you the Martin Sargeant scandal, which saw a church official jailed for five years after he managed to defraud the London Diocesan Fund of £5 million undetected.
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Jun 29, 2024 | 
spectator.co.uk | Fergus Butler-Gallie
Text size Line Spacing Comments Share Share Fergus Butler-Gallie Why is the C of E selling off Dick Whittington’s burial place? Linkedin Messenger Email The Church of England is flogging off Dick Whittington. No, this isn’t an innuendo or a twist from a pantomime, but reality. The burial place of the mayor and cat enthusiast, St Michael Paternoster Royal, is being sold off as an office. The people behind this act are the Diocese of London, who bought you the Martin Sargeant scandal, which saw...
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May 15, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Martin Vander Weyer |Place Lisbon |Amy Everett |Fergus Butler-Gallie
The US crackdown on trade finance for Russia from international banks — designed to impede imports needed for the continuing assault on Ukraine — is biting hard, reports the FT, quoting an investor who thinks “the logical endpoint of this is turning Russia into Iran.” Quite right too: sanctions like these are a vital non-military way to hobble Vladimir Putin’s campaign. But war and finance intersect in many different ways.
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May 15, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Dot Wordsworth |Place Lisbon |Amy Everett |Fergus Butler-Gallie
Why do people say: “You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”? Are they using it as they would a Shakespearean quotation such as “The lady doth protest too much?” Or do they think that by speaking the line made famous by Ian Richardson in the original House of Cards they generate wit anew so that some rubs off on them and cheers the conversation? I wondered whether I was encountering second-hand humor from some television series when I began to notice the phrase Wait. What?
