No comments about Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940-1985.

5 comments about Beyond Darkness: A Biography of Bede Griffiths.

1. Father Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) was an English Benedictine monk who resided in India for nearly four decades. Ms. du Boulay's book is the first major biography written about him since his death, and I, for one, bought it as soon as I could. Her meticulous, though not overwhelming, attention to the many facets of his life provides a fascinating and incredibly balanced perspective of this man of many roles: monk, mystic, writer, lecturer, and leader in Hindu-Christian interreligious dialogue. For all that I admired his embracing warmth and sheer wisdom, it helped to know just how much he had to live through; i.e. she does not shy away from describing with excruciating clarity some of the vicious verbal and written attacks from both Hindu and Christian fundamentalists he endured. My hope is that this very well crafted biography brings the importance of Father Bede's vision and life into the consciousness of many seekers. Highly recommended (along, of course, with his own writings--most of which remain in print).



2. Admirers of C. S. Lewis often like to read about his life and to become vicariously acquainted with his friends, too. If you want to know about Lewis as Griffiths' friend, read Griffiths' own autobiography (The Golden String), his contribution to C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table, and The Letters of C. S. Lewis. (It is much to be hoped that all of their correspondence that survives will be published.)

   However, admirers of Lewis may be advised that these two men profoundly diverged in their religious thinking. While Lewis was an apologist for orthodox Christianity, Griffiths eventually said he could understand Christ only by means of the Vedanta; that Jesus rejected the God of the Old Testament; that only a bit of St. John's Gospel attained to the insight of Hindu "advaitic" mysticism, etc. For readers whose faith is close to that of Lewis -- who said he was as dualistic as possible within Christian theology, meaning preoccupied with good and evil, and aware of God's warfare with the devil -- this book might have been better titled "Into the Darkness" of spiritual error. The book is readable and informative, presented by a biographer who wishes to promote Griffiths' "deep ecumenism."




3. While vastly inferior to Bede's own writings about his life ("The Golden String" especially), this book gives a great account of Bede's development from his formative years at Eastington, where he engaged in a Waldenesque experiment in "simple living" (which left a lasting mark upon him) to his nearly forty years in his ashram in India. Bede shows himself to be a genuinely ecumenical man, taking a wealth of ideas and concepts from all religious traditions that he comes into conduct with (but especially the Hindoo faiths). A man years ahead of his time, he would most probably had been excommunicated if many of his ideas had received more attention in the Roman church. He was in favour of radical reform of the Catholic Church, which he had began to think was outdated and did not speak to people in the way that it once did -- and that if it did not change its approach to speak to people in this modern day, that it would eventaully cease to be of relevance altogether. He was in favour of a married clergy and denied that the pope should be the head of the whole church, but that this was a corruption of the original church which had the pope of Rome as merely the "first among equals" -- a position that he was supposed to share equally with various other bishops throughout Christendom. His theology tended to be on the mystical side, which, to me, makes much more sense than the Biblical literalism that is sweeping the world today. He was also of the opinion that Jesus' message was at odds with the Old Testament, but that it agreed in all its essentials with the teachings of the Gita. His embracing of the similarities of Christianity and Hinduism was particularly impressive, especially in this day of finger-waggling evangelistic denominationalists who assure us that only they can be right. Bede always kept an open mind and was a seeker until the very end. He never stopped growing and learning -- something that would have been impossible if he had closed his mind to any other opinions other than his own. He is an example of a very, very rare type of individual. A wonderful look at an amazing human being.



4. Shirley du Boulay has given us a beautifully crafted biography of one of the most interesting Christians of our time. In many ways, Bede anticipated and served as a center of gravity for the new winds that blew through Christianity in the last third of the twentieth century. He advocated a decentralized, collegiate authority in the Roman Catholic church, and worried about doctrinal intolerance and insularity. Most importantly, he recognized that the world's faith traditions can indeed enter into a conversation with one another in which each enriches the other. By the end of his life, after having spent 30 odd years in Christian ashrams in India, he'd become a proponent of nondualism or advaita, accepting a radical panentheism that tried to honor the both/and of intuition as opposed to the either/or of rationality.

   Du Boulay's biography discusses Bede's personal life, but wonderfully summarizes the successive stages of his journey toward God. Ordinarily biographies are best read only after some familiarity with their subjects' writings. But this one is an excellent introduction to the thought of Bede.

   Bede Griffiths was a luminary in the interfaith dialogue, and during his lifetime he helped many Christians to come to a new appreciation of the contemplative roots of their own faith by inviting them to explore the spiritualities of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Unfortunately, the interest in interfaith dialogue and exchange that he encouraged seems to have waned in recent years, and particularly after 9/11.




5. I loved reading `Beyond the Darkness'. I always feel that I should read and know about the spiritual writers and teacher I admire and have been influential. But I must confess to hardly ever being able to finish the majority of biographies and autobiographies I have bought over the years. However, Shirley du Bouley's account of Bede Griffiths, his life, teachings, influences and ideas is an exception and made it onto a short list of those that I could not put down until I had finished.
   
   Just by looking at Shirley du Bouley's notes, one can see that she has done her research, drawing not just from the main published works of the great man, but from many unpublished sources. Additionally, her knowledge of Christian, Hindu and Yogic spirituality shows great depth and understanding - many lesser knowledgeable writers might not have been able to tackle all these traditions together so well and in such a fluid style.
   
   What I also loved about `Beyond the Darkness', is that it is no rose-tinted overview of Bede's life, and is not afraid to shows him as being only too human at times, with problems and difficulties just like the rest of us, which for me, made him come to life much more and be someone to personally relate to.
   
   Bede Griffiths was for many people one of the great spiritual men of the last century. His own autobiography was a best seller. But, for me, `Beyond the Darkness' is more insightful, as it continues where he left off - his journey to, and inclusive and interfaith experiments in, India - and takes us deeper into the mature years of his spiritual growth and the final revelation he had of the Divine Mother.

1 comments about Mrs. Thatcher's Minister: The Private Diaries of Alan Clark.

1. In Diaries, Alan Clark gives us an entertaining look at his life in politics during the Thatcher era. A politician of fortunate background, Clark is candid and often indiscreet. Happier to be a reckless read rather that an imperious tome, Clark lets us examine his view of politics -disdain of his constituents from Devon and the necessary machinations required to reach higher office. Though Clark never reached the cabinet position he craved, he led an active life in Thatcher's administration most notably in the Defence Department and the DTI, ending up achieving another dream of becoming a Privy Councillor. As a look at the privileged lifestyle of some of Britain's MPs and their reflections on being "servants" of the people who had voted them into Parliament, the Diaries are a gallop through the political history of the period of 1983 to 1991. Spiced with mentions of infidelity (both real and desired), blunders the Duke of Edinburgh would be proud of (calling an emerging African nation Bongo-Bongo land) and Brutus like stabs in the back of colleagues, Clark is highly readable and thoroughly enjoyable. I just wanted a bit more of an explanation about "the coven"

3 comments about The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks, Father of British Astronomy.

1. Isaac Newton famously said, "If I have seen further than others before me, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Newton was not always so quick to acknowledge his debt to his fellow scientists, but everyone knows the remark could apply to indisputable giants like Galileo and Kepler. However, he also would have meant a giant who has, almost three centuries later, become almost an unknown within the history of astronomy. In _The Transit of Venus: The Brief, Brilliant Life of Jeremiah Horrocks, Father of British Astronomy_ (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), Peter Aughton, who has written before on the voyages of Captain Cook and on Newton, puts Horrocks into his rightful place. It would be too much to say that he gives us a full picture of Horrocks and his work, for the mass of materials about the astronomer is just too meager. However, Horrocks was a brilliant astronomical observer and theoretician, and Newton knew it then as we should now.
   
   There was in June 2004 a transit of Venus, only the fifth since Horrocks watched his in 1639. A transit occurs when Venus seems to cross the face of the Sun, and was important in those days because it could be used to calculate how far the Sun was from the Earth. He studied Kepler's work at college in Cambridge, and trusted Kepler, but not blindly; he discovered that Kepler, who had correctly predicted a 1631 transit of Venus, had mistakenly missed a transit that was coming in 1639. Horrocks only realized this with a month to spare, but he was ready to trace the planet crossing the Sun; he did so by training his telescope on the Sun and projecting the picture upon a screen within a darkened room. It was his mathematical analysis of the movements and timing of what he had seen that enabled him to confirm that Venus was moving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, just as Kepler's laws had implied. However, a clear view of the planet crossing the solar disk showed it to be much smaller than Kepler had thought, and the calculated distance between the Earth and the Sun was far larger than any previous astronomer had come close to considering. Copernicus had estimated the distance to be 7.5 million kilometers, Kepler 22.1, and Horrocks weighed in with 95.4. Even then, he was well below the real figure of 149, but it can be said without exaggeration that he was the first man who had an inkling of how big the solar system really was.
   
   Horrocks wrote up his account of the transit, and also went on to show that the Moon tracked an elliptical, not circular, path around the Earth, although the path of the Moon wobbled irregularly due to the gravity of the Sun. He also showed that Saturn and Jupiter were vastly larger than the Earth. Astonishingly, he made these discoveries when he was only twenty-two; only a year later in 1641 he was dead. There is no evidence about the cause of his death. His account of his researches was not published until 1662, and he was belatedly recognized as a genius by the new Royal Society. His work was revolutionary at the time he did it, but was not as influential as it could have been, if he had been within the mainstream of British science rather than observing and theorizing near Liverpool, if he had lived longer, and if Britain were not torn by its Civil War. Newton, in his monumental _Principia_, gave special credit to Horrocks for divining the elliptical orbit of the Moon. His influence might be small, but his importance as an observer and as a theoretician (those qualities are not often so well combined in one person) is clear. As much as can be known about him is in Aughton's necessarily brief but admiring review, from which readers will get a good idea of how astronomy was done at the time, and a welcome introduction to an original thinker.



2. Since the dawn of history, every civilization has seen men who studied the skies. In Europe and Asia, astronomers existed in Babylon, Egypt, India and China. In America, the Incas and Aztecs built pyramids and temples which showed knowledge and fascination with the sun, moon, and stars in the night sky. England had Stonehenge.
   
   There's not much factual knowledge about Jeremiah Horrocks short
   life; there has been only one other biography to surface, published in 1859 by A. B. Whatton. Photographs show the area and places he lived as he moved about. Born in May, 1618, he was only fourteen years old when he entered Cambridge on July 5, 1632. Just seven years later (1639), he was knowledgeable about the solar system and his observation of the primitive set-up he used in Carr House to view a rare celestial event, the "transit of Venus" was documented. It is similar to the way we are encouraged to watch the eclipse of the sun so as not to be blinded by the strong rays. He died in 1641.
   
   The Royal Greenwith Observatory was founded in 1675; John Flamsteed was appointed as the first Astronomer Royal. However, Jeremiah Horrock is known as the "Father of British Astronomy. This book was released to coincide with the June, 2004, viewing of Venus moving across the face of the sun (for only the fifth time since the 1639 occurrence: about every 73 years or so).
   
   My son Geoffrey earned his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Chicago and learned how to handle the monster telescopes at Kitt Peak as a grad student way out there in Arizona.
   
   Peter Aughton has written ENDEAVOR, RESOLUTION, and NEWTON'S APPLE. He teaches at the University of the West of England and a Fellow of the Institute for Math. In 1970s he was involved with the Concorde supersonic airliner. He certainly knows his astronomy from primitive times.



3. The accomplishments of Jeremiah Horrocks, as depicted in this book, are truly astounding. The author carefully reconstructs Horrocks' genealogy, his brief life and his ground-breaking work in astronomy, amidst the backdrop of seventeenth century England. The book is well-written, clear and engaging. Less appealing to me was that the book contains many passages reproduced in the original old English. This slowed me down a bit since I found them cumbersome due to the different spelling and sentence structure characteristic of the period. On the other hand, this may be inevitable, at least to some degree, because of the book's subject matter. Overall, this is an interesting read that would likely be particularly appealing to astronomers at all levels.

1 comments about Elizabeth I: The Competition for Representation.

1. Frye's study of Elizabeth's struggle to control her iconography and representation is very powerful. She discusses three major events in the course of Elizabeth's reign, and how merchants, courtiers and poets represented Elizabeth through them: praising her glory and virtue, yet simultaneously taking the critical liberties of a patriarchal society over a woman.

   Frye's third chapter on "Engendered Violence" is especially revealing, whether or not we can fully accept the extremity of such criticism in the character of Britomart in Spenser's Faerie Queene.

   This book is wonderful, a necessary read for anyone interested in the force of gender in the Renaissance.

No comments about Winston & Clementine: The Triumphs & Tragedies of the Churchills.

No comments about Sir John Gorman: The Times of My Life.

No comments about King James.

1 comments about Requiem for a Spy: The Killing of Robert Nairac.

1. This is an interesting work about the killing of Robert Nairac, an undercover officer who served with the SAS in Northern Ireland. The book describes in detail how Nairac was killed by a drunken local mob and then executed in a lonely field by a card carrying member of the IRA. While this book seeks to explain the background of the killing, the author uses the story line as a platform to indict the British government and their war in Northern Ireland.
   
   The author raises questions about Nairac's sexual preferences and builds a case arguing that Nairac was a cog in the British's terror operations. Nairac is exposed as participating in the illegal killings of Irish citizens and actively aiding loyalist terrorists like the Ulster Defense Association. The reader comes away with the understanding that Nairac, ultimately, reaped what he had sown and was no better than the men who actually killed him.
   
   The author, quite obviously, is no friend of Britain and uses the book to expose the murders, war crimes, and other atrocities sanctioned by the British state in their war against the IRA. In fact, the author spends more time flaying Britain than he does addressing the Nairac murder. Overall, a good read on the subject for a reasonable price.
   
   I would have rated this work higher had the author been a little more balanced in his approach and if he did not resort to shakespearian like prose as he was want to on several occasions.

No comments about William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain (Library of Religious Biography Series).