As a boy, growing up in Wadowice, Blessed John Paul II – Karol Wojtyla – wanted to be an actor and, as a teenager, he participated in the school theatre. In 1938 on enrolling at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University he was able to study drama until the Nazis ended classes...
The Plight of Pakistan's Minorities – Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Zoroastrians facing campaign of relentless violence..
Article for E-Politix.com ahead of House of Lords Question on the plight of Pakistan’s minorities, June 22nd 2011: Question to be raised by Crossbench Peer, Lord Alton of Liverpool. In 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah gave a speech to the New Delhi Press Club, setting out...
The West of Ireland Maamtrasna Murders 1.
In the 1950s the Princess Maud and Hibernia were two of the ferries which plied their way between Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire. I travelled on them several times as a youngster when my mother took me back to Mayo to see her people. Memories of long, exhausting,...
Thomas a Kempis and The Imitation of Christ
What did Pope John Paul I, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Edith Cavell, Dag Hammarskjold, Jose Rizal, and the fictional Maggie Tulliver all have in common? Put another way, if you were marooned on Roy Plomley’s mythical desert island, and told that you could take The Bible...
The State Visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland, May 2011
The State Visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland, May 2011 The defining moment of the State Visit by Her Majesty the Queen to Ireland was her bowed head in Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance as she laid a wreath to the men and women who fought and died for Irish...
Matteo Ricci and Lessons for China and Religious Liberty
This week, the Holy See held a three day meeting to discuss the state of Catholicism in China. Before their meeting, participants could have done a lot worse than read Mary Laven’s superb “Mission to China” – which charts the sixteenth century encounter of the...
Libya and the arms trade
The spectre of British manufactured weapons and munitions being used to crush dissent and to wound, maim and kill pro democracy demonstrators in North Africa and the Gulf brings great shame to this country. Elsewhere, especially in fragile or destabilised regions of...
In Harmony – making music in West Everton at St.Mary and the Angels
The uplifting strains of Julian Lloyd Webber’s seventeenth century ‘Barjansky’ Stradivarius cello are guaranteed to transport even the weariest soul to another, better, place. Music has the power to penetrate our deepest, darkest, hidden places – healing,...
Brian Jacques, Redwall and The Parting Glass
The Parting Glass First sung in the 1600s, The Parting Glass was well known in both Ireland and Scotland. Before Auld Lange Syne replaced it this song was the most popular parting song in Scotland and it is closely related to the Manx song Te Traa Goll Thie (It's Time...
Jon Cruddas, Robert Ressell, and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Frank Owen is the central character and hero of Robert Tressell’s “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”. The novel takes its name from the angry sense of impotence and indignation which Owen reveals in this extract from the book: "As Owen thought of his...
For 18 years David Alton was a Member of the House of Commons and today he is an Independent Crossbench Life Peer in the UK House of Lords.
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Letter from the Lord (David) Alton and Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, co chairs of the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, to Lord (David) Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, about the CCP’s forced repatriation of North Korean refugees in breach of both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
£1 Trillion – Raised In Parliament Today. The Cost of Reparations In Ukraine and Bringing To Justice Those Responsible.
https://youtu.be/xlEfrgwELvc Alongside the fatalities, injuries and chronic suffering and misery which Putin’s war has brought to Ukraine, the economic cost of rebuilding and remedying war damage is now estimated to be close to £1 trillion. Yesterday David...
Stop Perpetrators Getting Away With Genocide – Public Letter sent to the UK Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary on the Genocide Determination Bill 2023-24. The letter was published this morning, 17 April 2024, 06:00 am UK time.
Stop Perpetrators Getting Away With Genocide - Public Letter sent to the UK Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary on the Genocide Determination Bill 2023-24. The letter was published this morning, 17 April 2024, 06:00 am UK time. 'First of its kind': Prominent lawyers...