Deputy Editor @CatholicHerald | Writer, school governor, charity trustee, @orderofmaltaGB volunteer | Southwark (Ex: New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, Western Cape)
London, England
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“What is civilisation? I don’t know. I can’t define it in abstract terms, yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it. And I’m looking at it now.”
— Kenneth Clark
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Look what they did to the library in Leinster House (Ireland's parliament building).
It's the architectural version of a massacre.
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Every time we get post from the Vatican I admire their choice of typeface for their letterhead.
Commendably restrained.
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This year marks a quarter-century of Westminster's Jubilee line station.
Still looks magnificent: Piranesian Anglo-futurism.
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Tim Farron, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the late Queen “was a constant to us all… but the constant in her life was her faith in Jesus Christ.”
Her religion was neither perfunctory nor ceremonial but “a living, active faith in a living Saviour”.
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It is barbaric that we used to print books in a size and format actually convenient and usable for readers and that this stopped without any explanation whatsoever.
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Man in a biohazard suit riding a unicycle playing the Rhodesian national anthem on flaming bagpipes.
“… Give us strength to face all danger, and where challenge is to dare…”
Who SmokingJack
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If you’re looking to buy a college campus, Cazenovia (f. 1824) in central New York is shutting this year.
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Communists are good at hiding that the USSR spent the first third of the war effectively allied to the Nazis.
The 1941 May Day parade in Red Square included a delegation from Nazi Germany.
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Please pray for the repose of my uncle, Col. Matthew George Cusack, who died this morning.
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Need an app listing London pubs with working fires that also sends alerts when the fire is lit.
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Remembering the late Michele Ferrero — invented Nutella, Kinder Eggs, Tic Tacs, and Ferrero Rocher.
The richest man in Italy, he had a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in every company office and factory and paid for his workers to go on pilgrimage to the Marian shrine.
Hero.
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Just off the phone with Jerusalem:
Today the Municipality froze all bank accounts of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.
City is attempting to impose (and backdate) property tax on religious sites — from which properties used for religious purposes have always been exempt.
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Our primary school was broken into last week and tech stolen.
A forensics officer was sent to take fingerprints and log them but the Metropolitan Police no longer open investigations into non-residential burglaries.
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BBC mate once asked a local the significance of Cumbernauld Town Centre.
“Aye — it's like the mothership has landed… from the Planet Shite.”
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On behalf of the King of the Zulus, the venerable Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi has sent condolences to the House of Windsor following the death of our late sovereign Elizabeth II.
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HM the King has today invested HH the Pope as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.
Does this mean we'll see a banner of Pope Leo's arms in the Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey (often called the Henry VII chapel), that order's chapel?
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Find yourself a country where the charity private schools have students dressed in Tudor uniform whose band plays Soviet songs about Polish fields at an annual parade honouring the Lord Mayor of the semifeudal square mile in the middle of the capital city.
Christ's Hospital
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Aesthetically ideal solution to renovating the Palace of Westminster: make a temporary Parliament at the @ORNCgreenwich.
Put the Commons in the Painted Hall and the Lords in the Chapel.
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450 people will be received into the Catholic Church tonight across the Archdiocese of Southwark.
Another 500 in the Archdiocese of Westminster.
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BREAKING: Virginia's Washington & Lee University to be renamed after Denzel Washington and Spike Lee.
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Thought: Admiralty House would make for a much more prominent prime ministerial residence than Number 10.
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Nipped in to the gallery of the House of Lords today for the Prorogation.
Heard the old Norman French words ‘Le Roy le veult’ uttered in Parliament for the first time since 1951.
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Sometimes the directors of a German contemporary art museum are *exactly* what you'd expect them to look like.
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New altar rail just installed at the art-nouveau gem of a Catholic parish church, St Mary Magdalen’s in Wandsworth East Hill.
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alob 🥀ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ
This is no problem at all: Bond is actually fictional.
You can just re-boot it. You don't need story continuity when you've got a new actor. Sean Connery was 32 when Dr No was released in 1962 — no one pretends Bond should be in his 90s.
Film isn't real. You can just do things.
James Bond’s death in No Time to Die is causing a nightmare for the next film. Writers are stuck because Bond “was blown to pieces.”
Anthony Horowitz, author of three 007 novels, says:
“You can't have him wake up in shower and saying it was all a dream."
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GOD SAVE THE KING!
His Majesty attending the @acn_uk carol service this morning at the Jesuit church of the Immaculate Conception in London.
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Emmanuel Macron
Few things are sadder than that all the proud brick Edwardian schools across London have been turned into luxury flats while children are now forced to study in New Labour plastic boxes.
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I don't ask for much from the government, but I do ask for a large-scale revival of Norman architecture.
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Turns out depictions of Great Britain in wartime Mexican propaganda are something else. 🇲🇽🤝🇬🇧
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"The Poles were made free by their Catholic faith, their patriotic feelings towards their country, their sense of history, and their courage to face up to the terrible system that had been imposed upon them. And they set an example to the world." — @Roger_Scruton in #Poland
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Here's wishing a very happy birthday to Mother Dolores Hart – Hollywood actress turned Benedictine abbess.
This year is also the 50th anniversary of her solemn profession at Regina Laudis Abbey in Connecticut.
As an AMPAS member, she's the only nun with a vote in the Oscars.
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Christopher Lee was attached to SOE during the Second World War and lived to 93 — he saw a fair bit of the world.
Here he gives his admonition not to get involved with the occult:
"I warn all of you: never, never, never. You will not only lose your mind, you'll lose your soul"
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"The Archbishop of York said, ‘Jesus was a black man.’ The trouble is, it isn’t true. Jesus wasn’t a black man. He wasn’t a northern European either. He was a Jew. A Jew from the Middle East." – @WalkerMarcus
🔥🙇♂️👏 So, so right Marcus.
spectator.co.uk/article/don-…
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The Patriarchate now has no access to any form of payment for anything.
They were in talks to find a solution with the Municipality, who had promised not to act unilaterally in the mean time.
Now this, alas.
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Today at Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, Mass was offered using the Westminster Chasuble warn by Cardinal Wolsey at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520.
It was brought back by Thomas Arundell 500 years ago and kept by his descendants to this day.
#fieldoftheclothofgold
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America has the Oval Office and Great Britain has Downing Street but the Prime Minister of the Netherlands has his office in the Torentje ('turret') of the Binnehof.
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This month is the fourth anniversary of the death of Lt Col #ArnaudBeltrame, murdered by a terrorist after exchanging himself for a hostage.
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Strong objections were raised by @SenatorMcDowell.
Ireland is chocabloc with excellently done renovations and restorations — particularly of Georgian buildings.
Sadly there are also examples like this.
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There's a movement for Sardinia to leave the Italian Republic and join Switzerland as a 'maritime canton'.
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Brits used to get congrats for going to university.
It’s become such a scheme that now if someone’s 18 and we hear they’re not going on to uni people say “Good for him!”
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The College of Charleston, founded 1770 in the Province of South Carolina.
#charleston #southcarolina
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This is where the leader of the Conservative party should be chosen in secret conclave.
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Britain was poorer in 1953 but less stingy:
We built stands to house 8,000 guests for the Coronation instead of 2023's meagre 2,000.
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On starless nights the inhabitants of Paris would cower in fear as the giant I. M. Pei would come to select another innocent to imprison in his pyramid of despair.
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The best response is to the mosque-ification of the Hagia Sophia is to commission an absolute baller of a Netflix series recreating the visual glories, intrigues, and beauty of Byzantium to reawaken awareness of the Christian Roman Empire.
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A good man: simultaneously kind, blunt, generous, and stalwart — no nonsense. He suffered for the truth.
R.I.P.
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Hearty congratulations to Gavin Ashenden, Honorary Chaplain to the Queen 2008-2017, who will be received into the Catholic Church this Sunday by the Bishop of Shrewsbury. 🙏
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“The successful Catholic churches in this country are those which are increasingly rooted in our ancient Catholic traditions. Many many young people are flocking to Catholic churches which are resurrecting the ancient Mass and its beauty.” — @EdwardLeighMP
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Nice to see the Lords clerks back in their wigs. They were shamelessly abandoned under the previous Lord Speaker.
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Of the many minorities who call the land of Israel home, I think the Circassians are the coolest.
Concentrated in Rehaniya and Kfar Kama in northern Israel, they are certainly the best dressed. The King of Jordan has Circassian guards.
#Circassians #Adyghe #Israelis #Israel
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This past week I witnessed national treasure Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) cycling down my street in Chelsea and then 20 minutes later Gordon Ramsay driving a supercar down the King's Road.
I know which side I'm on.
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Please pray for the repose of the soul of Deirdre T., who died last week.
A veteran of more than two dozen pilgrimages to Lourdes with @orderofmaltaGB, she was incredibly patient and kind.
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Switzerland’s democracy, Solzhenitsyn points out, “did not spring from the ideas of the Enlightenment, but directly from ancient forms of political life”. #switzerland #solzhenitsyn
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The Germans — just to be typically infuriating — still do it.
The French even more so. It's the norm there.
But almost unheard of in Angledom.
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There is a campaign to @RebuildHighbury & Islington station.
This is definitely something we can get behind.
highburyandislington.net/
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BAD TAKE!
This is the trad flag of Maine and an infinitely better design than its boring seal-on-blue-field rival.
Bring it back!
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America’s Favourite Lesbian™ nitter.app/JohnnyABottom/status/1…
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The mayor of Columbus announced today that the city will be renamed Huītzilōpōchtli, and the explorer's now-empty plinth will be used as an altar on which to sacrifice the conquered inhabitants of other Ohio cities to satiate the sun deity's bloodlust.
A 22-foot-tall statue of Christopher Columbus was removed from outside the Columbus, Ohio, city hall after the city's mayor called for it to come down. abcn.ws/2YSTLUx
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Swedish House Furniture
