Bishop Ernest Barnes of Birmingham was a cantankerous.controversial Anglican prelate who in the 1920s, 30s and 40s took an angry evangelical stand against High Church clergy, trying to ban them from office, alarmed many conservative Anglicans by his enthusiasm for Darwinian evolution, and as a distinguished mathematician argued that science and religion could only be reconciled by a wholesale reform of church doctrine and beliefs. See Paul’s preliminary essay on Barnes on his website dpcrook.wordpress. com (under Blog). Click on:

Bishop Barnes

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was something of a Renaissance Man, good at so many things, from writing books, journalism, poetry and children’s book to sketching, sailing and traipsing across continents on foot. He was a great hero to Catholics and hated by many Protestants and secularists (Bernard Shaw was always lampooning him, and, as ever, Hilaire thundered back). In this short essay, Paul looks at Belloc’s life and his book on the crisis of civilization. Hilaire Belloc (click on this).