I DID not expect a banana and a papaya plant to make me emotional. Inside one of Kew Gardens’ glasshouses, surrounded by plants gathered from around the world, I came across banana and papaya plants ...

AUGUST is, of course, a time when you can get anything, even Christianity, into the newspapers, and there have been some interesting pieces as the month came to an end. The New Statesman had a piece ...

A joint event with RSCM. A one-day symposium at Southwark Cathedral celebrating church music in all its glory.

A new initiative seeks to attract a fresh generation of ringers to keep this piece of national heritage, now under threat, alive, Ed Beavan reports ...

THE values of “trust, dignity, and mutual care” in public life were highlighted by the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, in the House of Lords on Tuesday. “We all — public officers and citizens ...

DIOCESAN land in Kerala, in southern India, is being farmed for crops by the Bishop, whose produce raises thousands each year towards ministry costs. The Bishop of the Church of South India diocese of ...

THE theft of a rare book from a Suffolk church will not deter the congregation from welcoming casual visitors to the building, the assistant curate, the Revd Dr Edmund Smith, has said. The Paraphrases ...

SEVENTEEN homes for social rent in a deprived part in Birmingham are among the projects under way, five years after the Archbishops’ housing commission’s report Coming Home. Church House, Westminster, ...

THE Growing for Wellbeing group, a gardening programme run in the grounds of Gloucester Cathedral, is “not about horticultural excellence”, says Lizzy Hathaway-White, who is the group’s ...

STUDENTS from Gordonstoun School have discovered what is thought to be the remains of a medieval Viking church on Swona, an uninhabited Scottish island. Students and staff took a ten-hour journey from ...

READING two books at a time sometimes throws up interesting resonances. Careless People (Flatiron Books) — a whistleblower’s account of working inside Facebook — arrived just as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ...

THE distinctive sound of ringing changes on church bells in the UK is in danger, owing to the ageing demographic of bell-ringers, which is being exacerbated by a lack of young new recruits. The ...