While art and landscape were undoubtedly the major themes in my reading this year, especially when they were combined, it is the dairies and letters of Etty Hillesum that was my standout book of the year. Partly, perhaps because of the times we live in, when violent right-wing aggression threatens world peace and contributes to the vilification of minorities in society, including rising antisemitism. Partly, also because of the Israeli government’s total destruction of neighbouring Gaza, an ongoing racist attack that goes against much of the writings of the Prophets, is not the will of many faithful Jewish people and would have been anathema to Etty Hillesum. There is such generosity in her writing, in the face of terrible privations and the knowledge of certain death in a concentration camp, that she shows us a very different way to live, to be part of society and to be human. Reading her diaries after exploring George Rouault’s etchings of Misery and War fused the two together, with Etty’s openness to Christ increasing the poignancy of Rouault’ crucifixion images, and his sharp depictions of cruel judges drawing us back to the self-centred narcissism that dominates contemporary headlines.  

This was the most books read since 2019 (when I did manage a book a week), and while it is still too few (and the pile of unread volumes is forever rising), there were some invigorating discoveries in the mix, mainly, other than Etty Hillesum, related to artists. The Tirzah Garwood exhibition catalogue stands out (read before visiting the exhibition, which was excellent, but very busy), as does the biography of Stanley Spencer’s early years which provided helpful context for his paintings, although was circumspect about his faith. Reading Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the company of David Jones’ etchings was a delight, although Jones’ foreword was elliptical and mentally taxing in the extreme (stimulating but labyrinthine). Ending the year with Ivon Hitchens was a treat, and so onward to some new discoveries in 2026.

1. The Story of Nature, Jeremy Mynott, Yale UP, 9780300245653.

This is a substantial book to begin the year with. It also ends badly, with little hope for the future of this planet’s current pool of biodiversity. Beginning with cave paintings, it explores human relation with and perception of ‘nature’. One of the key questions throughout concerns how much we are, or perceive ourselves to be, part of nature? Also, when did we begin to have an impact on the environment – when we moved from hunter gatherers to pastoralists, during the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, at the dropping of the nuclear bomb? Whenever it was, it is a mere blip in the history of the planet, which has experienced several wipeouts and recovered, but that is scant consolation for the destruction we are wreaking on fellow species and, ultimately, ourselves.

Philosophy, centring around Aristotle, comprises a significant building block of the book. Aristotle’s work on zoology, followed by his pupil Theophrastus’s complementary treatises on botany are foundational for successive scientists and the classification of the natural world. This has tended to embed a hierarchy of simple structures leading towards more complex ones, with humanity (sometimes God) at the apex. However, current studies are also invoked that show how difficult it is to discern intelligence, emotions, tool use, etc., in species that are built so very differently from us.

There is a theological chapter, but it focuses heavily on interpretations of Genesis throughout the Middle Ages that prioritised human domination of fauna and flora. This is slightly ameliorated by reference to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si, but completely erases the entire strand of Celtic theologies of nature, which were also influential in the early Middle Ages. However, there is room to include mention of Church Fathers who saw nature as a book to be read alongside the Bible, offering a fuller view of God’s work in the world.

Poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Clare provide important observational and instinctual insights into nature and our relationship with it, and there is some mention of artists Constable and Turner. However, there is no room for Samuel Palmer or John and Paul Nash, which is a shame as they offer another route into spiritual or mystical connections with our surrounding environment and while there is plenty of space for modern nature writers, Ronald Blythe, whose writing is deeply embedded in place, is highly observational and threads together human life with the entire surrounding environment, is also ignored.

That said, and I personally would have liked more on the Comte de Buffon, Gilbert White and Sir Peter Scott, this is a deep, wide-ranging, informative, well-constructed and well produced book, which I will want to read regularly, as a reminder that we live in not on the earth and our every action has consequences for the present and future flourishing of our world.

2. Murder Under the Mistletoe, Richard Coles, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, ‎ 9781399621472.

I only partake of the Canon Clement novels when the e-book provider of my choice reduces them to under £1.00. Even then, I feel cheated. However, other members of this household feel that Revd Coles has a fine turn of phrase. This novella begins with the damp ceremony of rural Christmas liturgies, flounders through a delicacy I don’t think I’ve ever tasted – bread sauce – and fizzles out with a murder late in the day that feels as well structured as the slowly decomposing Paxton and Whitfield stilton on the sideboard. Not a happy read.

3. Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious, James Russell, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 9781781301302.

Tirzah Garwood was a strikingly imaginative and talented artist, best known as the wife of Eric Ravilious. She was taught by Ravilious at art school and together they became proficient, exciting, wood engravers, but then following their marriage she focussed more on family life and supporting her husband. Still she was innovative, learning how to produce complicated and distinctive marbled papers and forming a business to sell them after having some success in creating wood-engraving pattern papers. By 1942, when Ravilious, working as a war artist, was lost in an air-sea rescue mission off Iceland, she was already being treated for cancer and died in 1951, aged only 42. In that last decade she had married for a second time, written an autobiography, and created a number of striking and vivid collages along with a body of visually arresting paintings, many composed of domestic themes subtly infused with surrealist inspired elements.

This beautifully illustrated book, containing a series of short essays, accompanies the current exhibition of the same name at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The essays are slight, but they do add some depth to the striking and impressive artwork. Influences from those of her circle, such as Ravilious, Edward Bawden and the Nash brothers are evident, but her work is highly singular, with elements that are more reminiscent of Frida Kahlo or Leonora Carrington. The book and exhibition provide an opportunity for Garwood to emerge out of the shadows of her more famous companions and to be seen as a perceptive and virtuosic artist, one of a number of early to mid-twentieth century women whose work is only now coming to be appreciated on its own terms.

4. What are we Doing Here? Essays, Marilynne Robinson, Virago, 9780349010465.

Some books make you realise how little you know while pushing you to the limits of your understanding. This is one of them, it is fearsomely intellectual, giving no quarter in its pursuit of profound truth, and it does not make for an easy read. I’m not sure how much I comprehended, but I learnt a great deal about the danger of assumptions.

Marilynne Robinson is an author whose novels, especially the Gilead series, I have long loved. She is a compassionate, generous novelist, who shows deep kindness in her portrayals of each character, not judging them, but laying open with clarity and gentleness every aspect of their personalities, the good and the bad. She creates people who come alive in all their complexity, who make mistakes that act like fault lines throughout their lives, but who are never caricatures, ciphers or flat-packed archetypes.

Her essays are very different. They are trenchant, hard-hitting and offer very little sympathy for those with differing opinions. She self-identifies as a Puritan, she has studied Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin and Puritan divines such as John Flavel in great detail. Her understanding of Puritanism and Calvinism is far richer than contemporary stereotypes, yet it feeds into and expands her own liberalism, rather than rubbing up against it. Her critique of the Anglicanism that was imported to, and shaped, parts of the North America is revelatory, while her appraisal of and denunciation of Fox News is devastating. Her exploration of the Christian virtues is theologically intense, while her unpacking of the sacred and the human is a thing of holy wonder that lays bare the paucity of deterministic philosophies. This is a book that has given me much to think about, a reminder that history is never as simple as we try to portray it, and that questioning our own assumptions is a good starting place for a richer, more inclusive appreciation of creation, God, each other and our own being.

5. Way Back, Sara Cox, Hodder and Stoughton, 9781529392500.

Plenty of bubble, little jeopardy in this mid life moving on tale of a woman, Josie, falling out of love with her husband, who is quick to find himself a new partner. With her daughter at college and in need of change Josie, supported by a coterie of caring, thoughtful friends, takes the plunge to move back to her childhood Lancashire farm. This unleashes deeply hidden aspects of her family history, much to her mother’s intense displeasure. But then, Joise and her mother have long had a fractious relationship, and this is the part that held my attention, that prickled me with a shiver of recognition. Overall, a light, lively, undemanding read.

6. Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: The Glaciers, edited by Rob Airey, Lund Humphries, 9781848226975.

In May 1947, respected Cornish based Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham clambered over the Grindelwald Glacier in Switzerland. It was a turning point in her career, with her observations subsequently unleashing 50 years of reflection, moving her from landscape to abstraction. The combination of weight, translucency and fluidity that she found in the glacier’s forms translated into a new graceful, abstract style, which may bear some relation to the work of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, but was very much Barns-Graham’s own In this collection of essays and poetry, art historians, a filmmaker, two poets and a glaciologist look in detail at this specific body of Barns-Graham’s work, unpacking layers of meaning, relating her images back to the actual glacier and lamenting its severe diminution in the 75 years since she scaled its frozen tongue. At the back is an illustrated catalogue of all her known glacier pictures. I don’t know why I respond so strongly to them, but I do, they seem to capture an essence of solidity, of the intricacy of landscape, while also speaking of something ethereal, intangible and fleeting.

7. A Piece of Work, Simon Russell Beale, Little, Brown & Company, 9780316725323.

Autobiography of a theatrical giant mediated through the Shakespearean characters he has played. Russell Beale has a lovely light, conversational style that offers enough information about his upbringing to give a carefully curated sense of who he is, while also laudably keeping private his closest adult relationships. At no point does he give a definitive view of any of the characters he has played, including Iago, Hamlet, Falstaff and King Lear, but he saunters around each one, supplying observations from his own experience, from witnessing other productions and from the minds of some of the directors he has worked with. It is an entertaining, warm and gentle read that brims with love for theatre, for Shakespeare and for the immense variety of humanity.

8. Generous God, Giles Goddard, Canterbury Press, 9781786225610.

This was not the book I thought it was – I was looking for hints and tips on growing generosity in my worshipping community. This is far more personal, a priestly baring of the soul. And already I am on edge, I am uncomfortable with Christian’s who tell their own stories because, inevitably, they command attention, and God gets too little of the glory. In this case Giles is most definitely centre stage, warts and all. Coming to this book straight from Simon Russell Beale’s quietly conversational autobiography, where his sexuality is an acknowledged, but not dominant thread throughout, and returning, as a palate cleanser, to my beloved Ronald Blythe, I found Goddard’s hedonism harsh. But then, that is also because I have known other clergy struggling with a similar ‘bifurcation’, using Goddard’s term, of their being, some of whom did not survive the battle. So, I may not like it, but this element of his story is necessary to hear and his treatment by other Christians for trying to build a lasting relationship with a same sex partner is terrible, to be lamented and repented.

Giles Goddard is described as a leading C of E activist. His energy and passion are amazing, and worth celebrating. He is a champion of inclusivity, who also knows that biodiversity matters. He plays a significant role in drawing faith groups together, over issues and through prayer. He is a frontline climate change campaigner, who the next minute is tramping through a swiftly shrinking tropical rain forest. Whoa, how does he justify that? How can anyone justify global travel? He tends to act first and inform the PCC later, which is the culture in which I was brought up, and which I have seen lead to mortal ruin, for parishes and priests. His urban, multi-cultural, resource rich ministry, feeding off the energy of the city (and giving much back), is vital and valuable but a world away from the monocultural multi-parish rural benefices that I have called home.

Intriguingly, it is possible we crossed paths many years ago. While my wife (to be) and I were studying theology at Kings, in London back in the 1980s, there was one person on the course, a friend of Giles, who we both knew, who’s flat I visited – and still recall being drawn to a lovely Chagall etching – with others from the church community he was part of being around at the time. Yet, the C of E Goddard describes is world’s away from that I experience daily, which makes me glad for his ministry in the places where I doubt I could survive. I’m not sure what to do with this book next – if I can find the right person to pass it on to I will, because underneath the story of Goddard’s resilience, his sticking to faith and priestly ministry despite the kicks and the vilification he has had to endure – God’s overwhelming love for each of us and for all creation beats steadily on. Now, it is my day off, and I really should step away from desk, strap on my Swarovski bins and count the Cattle Egrets in the fields surrounding the Lake that borders this benefice.

Oh, and by-the-way, the Third Candle on the Advent Ring is Pink for John the Baptist – Gaudete Sunday – not Mary as described. And, while we are at it, it was Faithless who sang ‘God is a DJ’, I’ve preached on it many times, not the Chemical Brothers, as Giles Goddard states.

9. Talking to the Neighbours, Ronald Blythe, Canterbury Press, 9781853115530.

It is always good to get back to Ronald Blythe, whose calm, unhurried style slows my pace while his gentle ruminations guide me through a liturgical year that is full of connections with local stories, art, literature, people, plants and places. These ‘Conversations from a Country Parish’, as they are subtitled, offer a way of preaching that is intimate and yet expansive. There is some repetition and some changes of mind (both Matthew and Mark can’t be the earliest Gospel), however, overall this is a quiet masterclass in being rooted in both faith and community.

10. Fully Alive, Elizabeth Oldfield, Hodder, 9781389810760.

Elizabeth Oldfield is a professional writer who wants to talk about her Christian faith without becoming preachy or too bogged down in doctrine. She tries to not to alienate non-Christian readers by only bringing God into the picture when absolutely necessary, however, that is still pretty frequently. She unrolls her life through the prism of a contemporary rendering of the seven deadly sins, which proves to be a valuable way of dissecting each one in relation to an ‘ordinary’ western woman’s lot. As she does this, sharing her own mistakes and triumphs, she offers a way of living that goes beyond the surface of material contentment. As it does so, so God shimmers to the surface with generosity, openness and challenge. There is plenty to reflect on here, although my sense is that it will be tough to place this book in the general market where it might have the most effect.

11. Discovering Christianity: A Guide for the Curious, Rowan Williams, SPCK, 9780281090631.

Sometimes Rowan Williams is blindingly lucid, streaming with insight after insight that jump start a myriad of connections and open up galaxies of thought. A series of lectures he gave last year in Wells Cathedral on the Prologue of John were like this, as a nave packed with clergy and readers was spellbound. Then there is this little book, parts of it taken from a previous SPCK series of booklets on various faith subjects. The eminent writers who have commented on the back of the book say wonderful things about its accessible profundity. I’m going to have to read it again as it left me completely bamboozled. This, to me, was opaque, tortuous and impossible to get to grips with.

12. George Rouault’s Miserere et Guerre: This Anguished World of Shadows, Holly Flora, Soo Yun Kang, MoBiA, 9781904832256.

Rouault’s complete series of etchings depicting both Christ, elements from the Psalms and contemporary sorrows, despair the anguish of damaged lives. Conceived before the First World War, but not published until after the Second, these 58 images act as a catalogue of the human destruction wrought by global violence. Yet they also offer dignity, stoicism, and in the portrayals of Christ crucified, the ultimate enactment of the commandment ‘love one another’ which stands in taut contrast to accompanying portraits of venial figures of power.

13. Number 9 Dream, David Mitchell, Sceptre, 9780340747971.

Sometimes enthralling, often horrifying, ultimately too tricksy, messy and amorphous to be satisfying, this was a novel that seemed to want to out-Murakami Murakami with its violent and grubby take on Japanese urban living.

14. Lost in the Forest: Notes on not belonging from the English Countryside, Colin Heber-Percy, Gaia, 9781804192313

Midway through the journey of life, Colin Heber-Percy found himself in a forest, lost and alone, pursued not by leopard, lion or she-wolf, but by a bear. This is not the landscape of exiled Dante, whose Commedia unfurls a profoundly rigorous system of belonging. Instead, Heber-Percy is discovering how to be lost, how to take lostness on board as part of being, as an essential element of stepping out on The Way. While Robert Smith, of post-punk band The Cure, found himself alone in the forest, ‘running towards nothing’, Heber-Percy is met in his aloneness by the Jesus who is drawn not to committees of the organised devout, but to outsiders, misfits, dreamers and disturbers.

We are back on the author’s home ground, and place of ministry, the Savernake Forest, backdrop for his previous collection of Covid lockdown era reflections Tales of a Country Parish. Now the forest’s named trees take centre stage: massive, long-lived characters exuding presence and personality. With names evocative of their characteristics – Old Paunchy, Spider, Pointing, King of Limbs – they act as stages on the way of a discourse on dislocation, which ranges from the personal to the societal, augmented by centuries of philosophical reflection on humanity’s place in the world.

Previously, the pandemic forced disconnection upon us all. This book underscores how, for many, that sense of alienation had been always with us. Especially so for Heber-Percy, who, from his school days, never quite felt that he fitted in and so paid special attention to the language of belonging, enabling him to act as if part of the crowd. Yet it also gifts him the opportunity to stand outside (like Dante) and look in with fresh eyes, to suggest that clergy might be valuable because they are useless, in the same way that a friendship is deep when we don’t consider our friend to be useful to us. Or challenging us to discern whether our lives have been more often enriched by intimate occasions and individual encounters than by an assembly, council or crowd.

The book ends, as the Commedia does, on Easter Day. While for Dante this marks submersion into the presence of God via the rose-petal structure of paradise, Heber-Percy remains alone, with a tree at a crossroads, not out of the woods, but vividly aware that Jesus calls us from the margins, meets us there and invites us to meet others there too.

15. To the Eel Island: An Evening Journey, Charles Moseley, Merlin Unwin, 9781913159832.

Here is another East Anglian collection of reflections on rootedness, locality and vanishing countryside skills. Acclamations gracing the covers suggest a new rural classic, along the lines of George Ewart Evans, Ronald Blythe or Robert Ashton – a little precipitously, perhaps.

Charles Moseley has taught literature in Cambridge for decades while living in the little fenland village of Reach. Now, however, the time has come to ‘downsize’ and to relocate to an ancient cottage owned by his wife in the centre of Ely. Facing the challenges of leaving a beloved place where you are deeply rooted, where you know the stories behind road names and the genesis of marks etched into the stones of your house, to make a new start in a fresh environment is a rite of passage all too familiar to an ageing population. But this central theme or ‘evening journey’ recounted in Moseley’s memoir is sadly never fully realised. Being in the casually privileged position of owning two houses concurrently may have something to do with it: the author’s relocation is rather less displacement and more a gradual transition which significantly undercuts his moments of perception. Moreover, while Moseley can be an entertaining and informed companion, his tendency to dive eagerly into historical cul-de-sacs overwhelms and dilutes any focus upon the dislocation experienced by such a major move.

That said, the book is best when he traverses the streets of Ely, drawing out its past, the reasons for its layout, its place in the politics and history of England. Above looms the ever-present shadow of the Cathedral, which pulls him regularly into its rhythms and traditions. We accompany him as he enthusiastically unfolds stories of St Etheldreda and Oliver Cromwell, allowing them cosily to rub shoulders with memories of ordinary citizens who provided colour and character in more recent years. Here the relationship of past to present and the rich diversity of life and history to be found packed tightly in every city, no matter how small or provincial, comes tantalisingly alive.

While there is much to hold a reader’s interest, then, the book never quite fulfils the promise that its cover text offers. Hampered by weak editing and poor proofing (surprisingly, from one whose biography describes him as having been both a printer and a publisher), its avowed exploration of the vicissitudes of shifting your home base late in life fades into the background behind a maze of historical anecdotes.

16. An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum, 1941-43, Persephone Books, 9780953478057.

Reading these diaries while the Israeli Defence Force was simultaneously laying waste to Gaza and attacking Iran was a disconcerting experience. Born in Holland in 1914, Etty was a highly intelligent, vivacious and perceptive daughter of intellectual Dutch Jewish parents. One of her brothers was an extremely talented concert pianist. Her diaries are immensely vivid, thoughtful, spiritual, searching and open, even as they chart the closing down of Jewish life in Holland by the invading Nazis. Etty and her family were all murdered in Auschwitz at the end of 1943.

Etty sees clearly the squeezing out of life, the piecemeal removal of rights and dignity, the dehumanising of her fellow Jews and their transportation to the death camps. She is sanguine, accepting that this is also her fate, turning down opportunities to escape. However, she is never angry, because she believes that to hate her oppressor makes her no better than them. Throughout it all she continues to read, in various languages, many books, especially her beloved Rilke and the Bible – all of it. She takes much inspiration and consolation from the Gospels and the writings of St Paul, and her openness to a faith not limited by labels of Jew or Christian is simply breathtaking. Every day she looks for beauty, in her garden, the countryside, her friends, in the German soldiers she meets, and she relishes little acts of kindness.

The utterly degrading brutality she documents, the randomness of death, the vicious efficiency of the concentration camps, are intensely painful reminders of why the Jewish people in Israel are determined to use every means in their power not to fall prey to bullies and aggressors. At the same time, Etty’s writings make it crystal clear that following a path of hate and treating others as they have treated you is not only immoral, it also diminishes, perhaps irrevocably, the humanity of all involved. It leads to death of both body and spirit.

Etty found a way to transcend the terror she was thrust into. Her ability to keep looking for goodness and beauty, even in the darkest of places is open to us all. There are no simple answers to the immense complexity of the Middle Eastern conflict, but searching for the humanity in all those involved might be a worthwhile place to start.

17. Wild Thing: Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Gill, Richard Cork, Royal Academy of Arts, 9781905711475.

This catalogue for a 2010 RA exhibition links together three sculptors during the earlier period of their careers, leading up to, and around, the First World War. Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in the war, but still managed to leave behind a remarkable body of modernist work that links more closely with that of Epstein than of Gill. The book concludes with Epstein’s ‘Rock Drill’ of 1913-15, which still shocks and disturbs today, but marked an ending of this near Vorticist phase of his work. Gill influenced Epstein in working straight from the stone, without using maquettes, but their paths diverged significantly, with Gaudier-Brezeska and Epstein having more in common and Gill plumbing more mystical depths. The exhibition must have been fascinating and the book contains some striking photographs and absorbing information. While it was surprising to realise that such groundbreaking Modernist work was being created during the bombardment of the First War, and exhibited in London, there are undercurrents of violence and brutality that also resonate with the unrelenting, mechanistic horror of the conflict.

18. Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe, Ian Collins, John Murray, 9781399819060.

Ronald Blythe knew nearly everyone who mattered in the world of the British arts from the 1930s to his death as a centenarian in 2023. Yet he was wedded to his natal county of Suffolk, to his care for the home and garden of Christine Nash and her artist/plantsman/angler husband John, to his writing and to his ministry as a lay reader. Akenfield, published in 1969 and telling the stories of ordinary Suffolk rural lives which were rapidly changing due to the unstoppable march of agri-business, remains in print to this day and has influenced many of the new wave of nature writers. There was a simple generosity to Blythe’s life, yet it wasn’t without its complexity or contradictions and Ian Collins, who knew Blythe well in his later years, tells it with both clarity and love. Collins seems to be a good choice of biographer for many reasons, not least because he was close to his subject and at home with the house that was such an important part of his character. He is also well acquainted with the artists, writers and musicians who were all such key parts of Blythe’s life, yet is, perhaps, less in tune with his subject’s faith, although he appreciates the earthed, unfussy way that Blythe brings God’s presence trembling through every wayside flower, graveyard inscription and well-trodden byway of his little corner of a country parish.

19. Eric Ravilious 1903-42, A Re-assessment of his Life and Work, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (1986).

20. Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist, Helen Binyon, Lutterworth Press, 0718825910 (1983).

The Towner Art Gallery book is an exhibition catalogue while Binyon produced the first extensive biography of Ravilious, although nowhere does she mention that they were lovers. Both the exhibition and the biography were instrumental in the slow process of bringing Ravilious’ work to the forefront of artistic acclaim, and he is now considered one of the most important mid-twentieth century British artists. The Towner exhibition canters through the variety of his work – woodcuts, watercolours, lithographs, designs for Wedgewood and for textiles, illustrations for books, catalogues and much more. Binyon describes well the hard work and precariousness of the artistic life – the constant search for cheap rents and new commissions and the teaching posts that bring in much needed money but eat into the time for creation. She does mention some of the artistic work of Ravilious’ wife, Tirzah, but only really her expertise in producing commercially sought marbled papers. At this stage there was no desire to see Tirzah as an inventive and lively artist in her own right. The circle of artists that Ravilious mixed with – Edward Bawden, the Nash brothers, Enid Marx, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, et al, is a roll call of the greats of twentieth century British art, but out of this list, it was only Eric who was felled by violence of the Second World War. Today his work his seen through a lens of nostalgia, but it is never saccharine, and always ripples with layers of observation and meaning, which is why, beyond the seeming simplicity of his paintings, and the masterful complexity of his engravings there continues to be much to see and much to ponder on.

21. Ways of Seeing, John Berger, Penguin, 9780141035796.

Originally published in 1972 and reissued in 2008, so much has happened in the intervening years – personal computers, the internet, mobile phones, AI – that my initial thought that it would be no longer relevant. Technology has changed our ways of seeing, but the underlying issues are pretty similar because capitalism is still the major driver of art. Berger argues cogently for the prevalence of the male gaze in Western art and his contention that the dominant 17^th to early 20^th century form of oil painting has reflected, enhanced and proselytised for prosperity of the ruling classes. He talks about ever-present advertising pushing a the present away in favour of a rosy past and an impossibly glamourous future, a situation that is even more insistent and domineering due to the influencer culture of social media. At the end of day his arguments offer a bleak view of the purposes of art and the reasons why many admire, study, collect or produce it.

22. Recently Re-Read: The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd, Canongate, 9780857861832.

Officiating at the wedding of a couple who love mountain climbing gave me the opportunity to re-read Nan Shepherd’s meditation on the essential nature of her native Cairngorms. Not that Nan was the marrying kind, nor would she describe herself as a mountain climber. However, there was plenty of material here for a wedding sermon, especially regarding the hard work required to achieve, appreciate and attend to the slow reveal of a relationship. Reading Nan Shepherd in the wake of ‘The Salt Path’ controversy made for interesting comparisons. Shepherd hid the manuscript for decades, thinking it unpublishable, and it originally was produced by an academic press before being taken up by Canongate and reaching a wider, but still not vast, audience. It is a slim volume packed with passion, insight and observation, but also with emotion and some fairly gruesome stories. Its veracity lies in its overall intimation of our smallness set against the vast timeframe of the mountains’ histories. Nan Shepherd is very much her own woman, but she is not the star of the book, that is overwhelmingly the Cairngorms in all the shades of variety, biodiversity, moods, weather and geology.

23. Looking to Heaven, Stanley Spencer, Unicorn Press, 9781910065594.

Stanley Spencer didn’t write an autobiography, although he make several attempts. These notes along with his letters have been brought together by his grandson, John. This volume covers his early years until the end of the First World War, with the intention that two further volumes would follow to complete Spencer’s life. However, this one was published in 2016 and so far there is no sign of the rest. Which is a great shame, as what we have here is illuminating, although Spencer doesn’t always come across as a pleasant, or even easy to converse with, character. Early on there are a handful of ant-semitic comments that make for uncomfortable reading (but his views may have changed later on) and he is very forthright with his fellow artists, telling them clearly why he thinks some of their work is bad. What makes the book interesting is seeing Spencer’s artistic development, via his letters to and from fellow artists, potential buyers and friends. Alongside his work, there is his spiritual and intellectual growth – Spencer is always reading, and commenting on what he is reading. Even when in the forces during the war, his letters often mainly consist of pleas for new books, or thoughts on those he is reading. Favourites include Shakespeare, the Bible, particularly John’s Gospel, the Letter to the Romans and Tobit, Milton, Richard Crawshaw, Keats, Blake and Augustine, specifically Confessions. Coming from a musical family he also was interested in scores and talks a great deal about performances he has heard.

There was a particular series of small books on artists, published by Gowan’s and Gray’s, that Spencer was keen to collect, asking family and friends to send him specific artists throughout the war, so that he could keep up with his studies. Again, he is forthright in his opinions, Turner being one of the artists he felt was vastly overrated and deserving of his scorn. Throughout the war he kept drawing, usually portraits of his fellow soldiers, or their sweethearts, which they sent home. However, he was also treated extremely badly by the officers, perhaps because of his small stature or his sometimes strange behaviour. His letters and notes show a man constantly observing, thinking, planning, enlarging his mind, even though everything is tested against his home village of Cookham, and, inevitably, found wanting. The book ends with the armistice and the possibility that he will become an accredited war artist, despite his commanding officers trying to squash the idea. All the way through his faith is extremely strong – and unorthodox – affecting everything he thinks.

24. Pembrokeshire Standing Stones, Jill Young, Carreg Gwalch, 9781845242053.

Jill Young was a professional painter and teacher whose painting style ignored the conventions of British Modernism to present a form of landscapes more akin to the travelling antiquaries of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who mapped out the ancient monuments of the United Kingdom. Which is what she did for the standing stones of Pembrokeshire, tracking each down from the 1966 Report of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Painting each one in oils in the same format, she gives them a sense of continuity and solidarity with each other. Measuring each one accurately, she compares their size in the 1980s with that of the 1966 Commission Report, showing that some had sunk, while others had been tampered with, or badly damaged, in some cases by farmers who found these monoliths on their land a nuisance. Her writing about the stones is mystical, recounting many strange tales, some spiritual, some fantastical, but also ones which place the stones as crossing points and gateways for communities, harbingers of otherness. Her paintings are edge towards the overly dramatic, but never quite topple over into the absurd. There are lowering skies and wandering sheep, and in each picture the stones both dominate the land and are formed from it. Undoubtedly romantic in composition, these paintings make each stone look massive and authoritative, even though, when you read the text, some are quite modest in size. An enchanting book that sets up the perfect premise for a quest, to follow in the footsteps of Jill Young and her husband in finding each of these stones and recording their state forty years on.

25. The Ancient Mariner, S.T. Coleridge and David Jones, edited by Thomas Dilworth, Enitharmon, 9781904634140.

In 1929 Bristol bookseller Douglas Cleverdon published an edition of Coleridge’s poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ with ten engravings by artist and poet David Jones – eight full page illustrations plus a head and tail piece. Jones, who was renowned in many areas, including wood engraving, had only just begun working on copper. This influenced his technique of simple flowing lines combined with a judicious use of cross-hatching, to create a series of incredibly powerful images, each one not depicting particular lines of the poem but rather evoking a scene or section of Coleridge’s verse. For the second edition in 1964 Jones wrote a 39 page Introduction, however, there was only room for the first six pages to be printed in the volume. This Enitharmon edition includes the entire Jones Introduction plus a Preface and Afterword by Jones’ biographer, Thomas Dilworth.

Jones’ Introduction works like his long poems ‘In Parenthesis’ and the ‘Anathemata’, making many layers of connections, in this case from Ancient Greece and Celtic Mythology through Old Norse, into the Church Fathers, Medieval Christian theology and Christology while encompassing Chaucer, William Blake and Christopher Smart. His thoughts froth with vision and ideas, bubbling over with enthusiasm for Coleridge’s verse, which can then be seen in each of his engravings, that soar and sweep with an otherworldly majesty. These engravings are extraordinary, working far beyond Gustav Doré’s much more famous and far more literal offerings. They travel deep inside the mariner’s fear, his accidie, his neuroses, and they still swell with redemption.

Dilworth’s Afterword attempts, not entirely successfully, to emulate Jones’ connection making, trying to show that Jones’ has, explicitly, or implicitly, picked up on Coleridge’s chiastic structuring of the poem (which Dilworth describes as a form of parallelism that no other scholar has noticed). He pushes his examination of Jones’ engravings too far, yet in doing so underscores that these are images with great feeling for the poetry bristling with a charming, complex, intelligence yet remaining simply and stunningly beautiful.

26. A Death on Location, Richard Coles, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 9781399621410.

Oh dear, why do I do it? Fascinans, perhaps? Can’t bear to look, can’t bear to look away. Every time the Canon Clement novels get reduced to 99p I buy one, devour it swiftly and then wonder if it really was as bad as it felt. And now there is a TV series of the first book, which has so much wrong with it I don’t know where to start. Begone foul fiend.

27. The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman, Viking, 978-0241743980.

Oh dear, why do I do it? Terrible from start to finish. I didn’t care about the characters, who have long since the first novel descended into a collection of stock tropes muzzily inked in on ragged corners of disintegrating soggy cereal packet cardboard. Far too long: any interest I had in the plot fizzled out during the first half so that the perfunctory unveiling of the riddle barely registered.

28. The Owl and the Nightingale, Simon Armitage, Faber, 9780571357291.

Delightful, earthy, witty and occasionally scabrous rendering of the medieval debate poem, superbly enhanced by a fine page layout and the bold, bright illustrations of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, a contemporary take on medieval illumination. The story is slight – a Tawny Owl and a Nightingale debating their superiority, but Simon Armitage has caught the tone vibrantly and the rhythm sends the book lilting along with joyous pace.

29. Upon a White Horse: Journeys in Ancient Britain and Ireland, Peter Ross, Headline, 9781035414062.

Beginning with a family of three stones in an undisclosed Scottish glen, lovingly cared for by their local community, and closing with the budding of new shoots from the stump of the executed Sycamore Gap tree, Ross meanders across land and water discovering stone circles, henges, barrows, stone figures, chalk figures, the snaking boundaries of defensive walls and the slippery authenticity of Viking rituals. The solidity of stone, fragility of chalk, enigma of Silbury Hill, brutal practicality of the Antonine Wall, all lift into vivid life through conversations elicited from those he meets along the way: keepers, pilgrims, neighbours, archaeologists, fellow puzzlers who are discerning ancient connections and making new ones between artefacts, landscapes, histories and people. Some of those connections are refreshingly current. Take Ross’ journey from winter-solstice Stonehenge, enveloped in multiple simultaneously enacted personal rituals, to a Glasgow housing estate, site of a stone circle built in the 1970s. This modern circle, aligned astronomically to mark the passing seasons, has quickly nurtured its own stories, and has survived urban redevelopment, being relocated by council construction workers to a new home. Elsewhere, he encounters both Neolithic tombs and a twenty-first-century long barrow, built in Wiltshire using traditional methods and materials, whose 340 spaces for cremated remains were fully booked within two years of its completion.

At the heart of this observant, engaging and informative book we meet Gallagh Man, Clonycavan Man and compatriots: bog bodies excavated from peat which has preserved them in such leathery detail that their personalities, along with their tightly unfurling fingers, reach out to us, whispering snippets and echoes of their stories. Elements of these bodies suggest ritual killing, that perhaps these were kings sacrificed to deities during hard times to ensure the flourishing of their tribe. Together with Ross’ previous books, A Tomb with a View and Steeple Chasing, they remind us of the patchwork of individual lives and parochial communities whose culture, history and essence are embedded, like ribbons of DNA, into the soil, stones and bones of the landscape in which they dwell to form the bedrock of our multi-faceted regional identities.

30. The Testament of Mary, Colm Tóibín, Penguin, 9780241962978.

A mournful, Booker Prize nominated novella, that searches out the recollections of Mary, mother of a crucified man called Jesus. While it leaves open the possibility of Jesus miracles and resurrection, it also provides a searing and vulnerable picture of a woman whose remembrances of her son’s life are being subsumed by the mushrooming hagiography of his followers, who each have their own political or religious angle on his life. Trapped by those who are supposedly preaching freedom in the name of her son, her future has been diminished and her past rewritten, yet she fiercely holds fast to her own knowledge, her truth and his.

31. The Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, Camay Chapman-Cameron, Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, 9780957443495.

A rather superior hardback museum guide book, including fold out pages, packed with photographs and information about 250 key objects to give a guided tour of the place (although since this edition was printed the galleries have been rehung). Lots of fascinating facts about a truly global collection that was entertaining to read. Shame there was nothing about the Hilliard and Oliver portrait miniatures in the collection.

32. The Fish and the Waterwheel, Christopher Pilkington, Patmos Publications, 9780954853501.

A fun little novel that ends extremely abruptly, seemingly midway through the story. Aimed at children it tells (some of) the tale of an English family visiting Normandy fifty years after the Second World War and getting drawn into an archaeological hunt for seven churches, built in the village of Sept Églises by a travelling monk, Agapetus, many centuries ago. The mystery is interesting and the story whips along with pace, containing some stock, but amusing, characters, a rather ‘Allo, Allo’ take on French vernacular speech and some inventive action. Strangely, this copy is signed by both the author and Maureen Lipman.

33. The Eucharist in Four Dimensions: The Meanings of Communion in Contemporary Culture, Jessica Martin, Canterbury Press, 9781786224729.

This short but deceptively deep book knows that it is only scratching at the surface of the immense, multi-layered mystery of the Eucharist. Four chapters, one each on the point of the Eucharist; Flat Eucharist – going beyond words and screens; Eucharist as Theatre – place, space and bodies; the Eucharist in time. Pandemic era Zoom communions have set the author pondering on which meanings are being lost and which gained as the twenty-first century rolls on and our increasingly technologically mediated interactions with the world are rapidly changing. There is something of David Jones’ way of thinking about Jessica Martin’s discursive and magpie nature which draws in connections and context from a multitude of sources while always allowing the transcendent nature of Eucharist and its own wings to keep one step ahead of our understanding.

34. The Seeking Heart: A Contemplative Approach to Mission and Pioneering, Ian Mobsby, SCM, 9780334065852.

The downsides of this book are firstly that it is based on a doctoral thesis which tends towards a certain academic density and, secondly, that it covers a topic which the mainstream Church is not very willing to support. However, this is still an extremely valuable book, with much to teach about how the Church can approach, encourage and nurture the many people who would describe themselves as spiritual but not religious (SBNR). While this is research work, the author is also a practitioner of contemplative missional ways. He is writing from lived experience alongside qualitative observation. Time and again research shows that there are a substantial number of SBNR in the population who are looking for community connection but see mainstream Christianity as a barrier not a friend. The results of the author’s work show that this is an opportunity for a fresh approach to meeting people where they are, especially people who are already reaching out for a connection with the divine. Towards the end he quotes Karl Rahner: ‘The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic’, one who has ‘experienced’ something, or he will cease to be anything at all.’ As we move into a post-rationalist world, albeit one that is highly technological and scientific, the Church needs to be skilled in encouraging those open to trans-rational experiences to see them as steps towards a fuller encounter with God, which also means God in Christ.

35. The Orphan’s Secret Library, Glynis Peters, HarperCollins, 9780008707606.

Well, it was 99p and I like novels about bookshops or libraries, but no, it wasn’t very good, all swishing cliches and sloshing romance. It is a WWII set novel, about a 17year old orphan (unsurprisingly), who sets up a travelling library in a corner of Norfolk dominated by an RAF airbase that is taken over by the American Airforce. While the orphan, Alice, finds surrogate parents and a new purpose in life, her common sense, intelligence and enterprise attract the attention of local SOE agents who recruit her for a message running service. At the same time, she is noticed by a handsome US aircraft engineer, and thus romance and intrigue occur. It is a slight tale, slightly written and requires no effort at to read it, but there is little to excite or enthuse. Closing the book are adverts for the author’s backlist, all about wartime orphans. One was enough for me.

36. O Come Emmanuel: Reflections on the Advent Antiphons, Jane Williams et al., Church House Publishing, 9781781405192.

A slim set of reflections for every day of Advent illustrated by Korean artist SunYoung Kim and referencing new settings of the ‘O’ Antiphons by seven contemporary composers. Each antiphon has three days of reflections devoted to it, with a different writer every three days, concluding with Revd Lucy Winkett on the Magnificat. After each reflection there is a question to consider. The format is slight, but, with the lovely musical settings it did make for an interesting Advent service. The binding fell apart on the first read.

37. Both Alike to Thee, Melvyn Matthews, SPCK, 9780281050309.

Melvyn Matthews was one of my predecessors in my current benefice and I helped to launch a number of his titles, including this one, while I worked for SPCK. This is an intense retrieval of the mystical way, placing contemplative prayer back at the heart of Christian life. Referencing Grace Jantzen, who taught me about Julian of Norwich, the Cloud of Unknowing and Meister Eckhart at King’s College, as well as introducing me to my now favourite saint, John of the Cross, it is a heartfelt and trenchant counter attack to the dumbing down of faith and the infantilisation of prayer.

38. Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton, Canongate, 9781837260867.

Chole Dalton is a professional writer, with an extensive background in politics. The quality of her writing shows in this story of her raising a leveret that she finds potentially abandoned and brings into her barn conversion home. This is such a middle-class tale of transition from city life to gritty ruralism that it would be easy to dismiss it as another sneeze from the privileged, jet-setting chattering classes. But it is well-written, despite some early clichés, unfolding its story in light, immediate, accessible and clear prose. Of course, the hare’s upbringing, using Dalton’s house as a safe base, is enchanting, with the continual sensation of jeopardy adding a tingle of spice into the warm coulis of the growing understanding between human and wild creature. That Dalton is able to change her domestic routine to accommodate her house guest’s needs reminds us both of the riches that await us if we tune in to nature’s rhythms and the luxuries of space that wealth affords. There are few of us who have the money to live as she does, where she does, and those with 9-5 jobs or a house full of children would not be able to bend their world to the needs of a wild interloper. While I’m inclined to classify the book as a middle-class fantasy of rural awakening, I admire her integrity in never naming her hares, which adds significantly to their dignity – and hers; her writing is so lucid that the book is a joy to read, each encounter quietly thrilling; and I share her horror that there is no closed season for these beautiful, elegant, elusive and threatened mammals, who have been an integral part of our ecosystems for thousands of years. I shall be interested in what Dalton writes next, but I don’t share some of the effusive praise that I have heard lavished upon this book. It is good, but it is no ‘Peregrine’ or ‘Living Mountain’.

39. God Beyond Gender: Crafting Inclusive Liturgy, Mary Kells, Canterbury Press, 9781786226310.

The cover of God Beyond Gender depicts worship that is communal, colourful, ecstatic and uninhibited. Inside is a slim book that it is tight in focus, disciplined, clear, concise, yet aimed at igniting a shift in liturgical language that might lead to such wilder, more generous encounters with the untamed God. While in the twenty-five years since Common Worship was authorised, mainstream society has been informed by an extensive and complex discussion around sex, sexuality and gender, encouraging more nuanced, less binary understandings, the Anglican Church’s liturgies have remained firmly glued to a proliferation of male pronouns. As a parish priest and national lead for WATCH (Women and the Church) on gender inclusivity, Mary Kells has extensive experience, which she shares carefully and thoughtfully, of crafting liturgies that expand our perspectives on the divine.

The book’s opening thirty-five pages briefly explore current thinking on sex and gender before providing a concise rationale for why inclusive liturgies are necessary, scriptural and can lead to richer, deeper encounters with God. The second part opens with practical guidance on writing liturgical elements such as confessions, collects and eucharistic prefaces. These include alternative versions of the Lord’s Prayer that draw out some of the allusive, multi-dimensional complexity of the original Aramaic which traditional English renderings flatten. Before we get carried away, Kells reminds us how Church of England Canon Law relates to liturgy, dealing with this more extensively in an appendix, and where it allows scope for flexibility and creativity. How this works out practically is demonstrated through fifty pages of sample liturgies that are inspiring, refined in their inclusivity, refreshing, clear in focus, deconstructing impoverished binary linguistic barriers to make space for every member of a community to be comforted, discomforted, challenged and consoled by an untamed, complex, wild God.

40. Listening to the Music of the Soul, Guli Francis-Dehqani, SPCK, 9780281091331.

The 2025 Archbishop of York’s Advent book has been written by the Bishop of Chelmsford, bringing to it her own history as an Iranian Christian who has suffered persecution for her faith leading to exile from the land she still yearns for as home. Accordingly, in this compassionate look at Advent themes some of the concepts we meet are perhaps not ones we might be expecting – angels, silence and darkness, light and space, yes, but flight, violence, fear and hope, and reconciliation, maybe not so much We open with the Magnificat, which sets us on a musical trial, amplified by a regular return to Michael Mayne’s idea of the ‘enduring melody’ which holds us together. This, in turn, allows for contemplation on a range of music, some extremely personal, such as a hymn composed by her murdered brother, some such as Nick Cave and Sinead O’Connor chosen for their lyrical integrity, and some, including Dvorak’s Cello Concerto in B Minor and Bach’s Partita No. 2 for Solo Violin in D Minor for their divine sublimity. Her writing is limpid and quietly pressing, with much to reflect on as we approach the moment of Incarnation, when the Creator’s own melody becomes a refrain that echoes through all creation.

41. The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett, Corgi, 9780552177306.

I have a glancing acquaintance with Discworld having read about half a dozen of the series, which initially never quite gelled with me, however, over time, I have begun to appreciate more the philosophical and moral dilemmas that Pratchett explores. The Hogfather, Discworld’s equivalent of Father Christmas, is missing and, because his existence is integral to the continued smooth(ish) running of the world, Death dresses up in the red cloak with a false beard and pillow on his ribcage to take on the role and to ensure that children everywhere receive their presents and retain their belief. The plot involves all manner of characters, many working with murderous intent, with Death’s granddaughter, Susan, a mortal child with some of Death’s attributes, doing her best to unravel it and find out what has happened to the Hogfather. As belief in the Hogfather wanes, so this belief is described as sloshing about the world un focussed. As a counterbalance, as soon as someone wonders whether there is a monster who eats odd socks, or one that devours old pencils, or if there is a cheerfulness fairy, such a creature springs into existence. The extra chaos that this causes needs pulling into order. The race to find the Hogfather intensifies when it is discovered that without him the sun will not rise on the next dawn. Perhaps Death sums up the philosophy underpinning the book when, asked how the sky will be lit without the sun, he says that there would be no sun, just a gaseous, incandescent star.

42. Ivon Hitchens, Peter Khoroche, Lund Humphries, 9781848221499.

Back in the 1940s John Piper made comparisons between Ivon Hitchens work and the poetry of both Edward Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins. While illustrating this point with an Edward Thomas poem that does echo Hitchens’ landscape canvases, Khoroche makes clear the inadequacy of Piper’s comments. Towards the end of the book, and of Hitchens’ life, talking about the time when he knew him, Khoroche discusses Hitchens love of music and especially his discovery of Messiaen. As I was reading this later passage I was listening to Radio 3’s ‘Unclassified’ programme, whose curation of experimental electronica also, for me, fits with my appreciation of Hitchens’ paintings. Which is all a roundabout way of saying that the artist’s abstract oeuvre isn’t easy to discuss – it is best looked at, ‘listened to’, immersively, openly and without paying much heed to the titles of the paintings.

This is not a new book – first published in 1990, this latest reprint in 2020 – but is billed as the most definitive biography of one of the foremost British landscape painters of the twentieth century. Biographical information flows throughout, enough to anchor the works in context, but it is never intrusive or gossipy. Instead, the focus is on Hitchens artistic development, which is clearly described and shown, with a cornucopia of full colour plates, and which includes both some starkly beautiful nudes and vivid, expressive interiors. But it is the landscapes which dominate, and rightly so, as Hitchens was a master of evoking the spirit of place, the conjunctions of form and colour, space and shade, that lift an ephemeral view into an eternal, forever shifting, scene.

His work is painterly, and while they are not mentioned in the book, he puts me in mind of both Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Howard Hodgkin, who both wore their hard won mastery of their craft lightly. With Barns-Graham Hitchens shares the practice of serial production, with infinite variations, and with Hodgkin there is the power of specific brush strokes. If a Venn diagram was created for these three artists it might overlap at the centre with the adherence to theories of balance, colour, layout, etc., the careful placement of each element of a painting to produce the desired harmony and effect.

Khoroche is never intrusive, nor does he over-emphasise his subject’s character or lifestyle. Rather, he offers pathways into the paintings, makes useful connections, enough to enhance our viewing, but not dictate it. For that I am very thankful as this made reading the book a reflective, meditative and enlightening way to end a turbulent year.