International – Page 17 – For the fainthearted . . .

Looking for geniuses

It is hard to fathom why the world descended into the anti-intellectualism and fundamentalism that have become the mark of many societies. It is hard to understand why a striving for excellence became regarded as elitist and why an objection to dumbing-down would invite a flood of textspeak condemnation on social media.

A dozen years ago a photograph in a schoolbook prompted a conversation between myself and my daughter.

“Look at this!” she said. It was not often that school textbooks evoked such excitement.

“What is it?”

“It’s from a …

Corned beef and a bus ride

6th January 1991 was a Sunday. I went to the Mass at the cathedral and had then gone to visit a village, where we had corned beef for lunch. It is odd what details remain in the memory.

1991 had begun in the Filipino city of Baguio. The bus our group was to catch in order to travel to a village in Mountain Province did not arrive, there were mutterings that the driver must have over-indulged the night before.

“When is the next bus?”

“Tomorrow,” shrugged a man at the …

Flying to the Philippines

Thirty years ago today, on the Feast of Holy Innocents, 28th December 1990, with a group of four people from Northern Ireland, I flew to the Philippines. It was my first visit to the developing world and no matter how much I had tried to prepare for what was to come, I couldn’t cope with the reality of what I met.

Seeking somewhere to pray before going to Victoria Station for the journey to Gatwick, I had stepped into Westminster Abbey, only to be confronted by a demand for payment. …

Dickensian values

Mrs Dickens’s Family Christmas on BBC 2 television was a revelation of the cruelty to which Charles Dickens had subjected his wife, Catherine. It was a conclusive indictment of one of England’s greatest writers, including, as it did, documentary evidence from the writer himself. The deed of separation, excluding Catherine Dickens from her own children, and the comments about Catherine in his will, were testimony to Dickens’ spitefulness and bitterness.

Perhaps such a streak in the writer might have been suspected, he has such a profound understanding of dark characters …

Tomb light

The year turns at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. If the day is clear, in Co Meath in Ireland, at sunrise tomorrow, the sun will shine down the passageway that leads to the inner chamber of the great passage tomb at Newgrange.

For 3,000 BC, it is an extraordinary piece of construction. There must have been many patient years devoted to building the passage and chamber with the precision required to ensure that it was only on the very shortest days of the year that the rays of sunlight penetrated into …

The quacks are back

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought forth the range of quack products that emerge at moments of crisis. Without tests, without empirical evidence, without review in any reputable scientific journal, cures are advertised to unwitting and credulous customers.

Had he been able to imagine anything so far-fetched as the Internet, Leo Tolstoy would have anticipated the massive proliferation of websites devoted to quack medicine. The faith-healers, the bone-setters, those with the cure; the alternative therapists, the practitioners who charge no fee but leave a “donation” box at the door; the snake-oil …