The Abbey of Misrule

1 day ago | paulkingsnorth.substack.com | Paul Kingsnorth

A very happy St George’s Day to all of my English readers - and, indeed, to any readers in Georgia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Malta, Ethiopia, Moscow or Genoa, all of which claim the dragon-slayer as their patron. He’s a well-travelled saint, is George. I don’t think he ever visited any of these countries - he certainly never set foot in England - but perhaps that’s a measure of success. Globalisation isn’t a new phenomena. Last year, I wrote a piece here about the ‘English soul’ to mark our saint’s day.

4 days ago | paulkingsnorth.substack.com | Paul Kingsnorth

The force that through the green fuse drives the flowerDrives my green age; that blasts the roots of treesIs my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked roseMy youth is bent by the same wintry fever. What is this force, this force that through the green fuse drives the flower, that through my bones drives a weariness more often now, that through the rocks drives the water? Is it time, merely? Encroaching death?

1 week ago | paulkingsnorth.substack.com | Paul Kingsnorth

Hello readers. This is just a quick update on a few things going on - but before I get started, I want to offer up a big thank you to those American readers who responded to my recent request for book tour invitations. I have to say, I didn’t anticipate how overwhelming that response would be. I have had over a hundred invitations to events, bookshops, universities, conferences, churches, monasteries and peoples’ front rooms, from all over your very big country.

1 week ago | paulkingsnorth.substack.com | Paul Kingsnorth

The Temple Church, London, EnglandWhat do Rosamund the Fair’s lover King Henry II and Renowned Author Dan Brown, creator of the humungous bestseller The Da Vinci Code, have in common? Only this: they have both spent time in London’s only round church. But this - as we can see from the quality of its clientele - is not just any church, and its roundness is not the only thing that makes it unusual.

2 weeks ago | paulkingsnorth.substack.com | Paul Kingsnorth

How should a Christian write a novel? It's a question that occupies me these days. I am both a Christian and a novelist, and I haven’t yet worked out how to fit the two vocations together. For me, this is a mid-life problem. I became a Christian quite unexpectedly about five years ago in my late forties, after a long spiritual search through other traditions, having been brought up with none. Before that, though - long before that - I was a writer.