I obviously don’t know how it is where you are reading this, but here in southern England, having enjoyed a small run of deliciously warm...

by Mark Meynell As Andrew reminded us in a piece posted just recently, Easter Sunday is when it’s all just getting started. It’s no...

Music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. — Measure for Measure, Act 4, Scene 1 Music was crucial to...

There is no guarantee that one’s last words on planet earth will be weighty, profound or even memorable. None of us know the exact hour...

Picasso said (allegedly), ‘Good artists copy; great artists steal.’ Well, knowing a little bit about him, he probably stole it. Or was...

Here’s the dilemma: you’re desperate to get a message out, but only to the right people. It’s imperative that the wrong people don’t hear...

If the challenge behind last week’s 5&1 was the relative scarcity of music to fit the topic (although perhaps not as rare as some might...

A requirement to create art that is ‘relevant’ can be a curse. After all, today’s relevance is tomorrow’s obsolescence. Not only that,...

There is a deep-rooted logic to the church calendar. It doesn’t always feel like that, granted, but I’ve often found that its apparent...

How do you articulate to others an experience so searing, so crushing that one is left gasping and flattened? For many of us, our own...

by Mark Meynell It’s the stuff of little girls’ (and not a few little boys’, no doubt) dreams: a vast portrait-lined hall, say,...

You’re probably unaware if reading this in the States, but we don’t really do Halloween in Britain; or at least, we didn’t until...

Classical music is so stuck up, isn’t it? All prim and proper in its white tie and tails—no wonder it gets a wide berth. Yet, as with any...

Most artforms are essentially con-tricks. A painting is a fixed, two-dimensional image designed to give the illusion of three dimensions...

It doesn’t matter where you are in Great Britain (that is England, Scotland and Wales), you are always within striking distance of the...

This is the first in a weekly series that will seek to break down the mists and myths that put people off the vast treasure house that is...