Author: Jeff Fountain

When Henry Vyner-Brooks proposed a double biography about two ‘Fathers of Europe’, his publishers were not convinced it would work. Although they had previously published his Renaissance novels, they balked at his plan to present a ‘set of binoculars with which to observe the drama of western civilisation’. After all, the names and stories of…

Reflections with family and friends on the highs and lows of the past year over the past days were enriched by a story shared in a friend’s Christmas newsletter. After a church service, a young lad was intrigued by the organ console with its maze of stops, pedals and keyboards. When the organist asked him…

The story is irrepressible – despite all efforts to eradicate religion from the ‘winter holiday season’; undeterred by the shrill claims of the ‘New Atheists’ (remember them?) that religion was the root of all evil ; and regardless of the bastardisation of St Nicolas into the crassly commercial Santa Claus. Once again this December, the unlikely story of…

Imagine a world without love: where might is right, money trumps justice, indifference cancels out compassion, and cruelty offers entertainment; a world shaped by the realpolitik of Machiavelli or the nihilism of Nietzsche.  Some leading intellectuals fear we are headed towards such a world as the memory of Christian values fades. Public figures including Niall Ferguson, Roger…

Strange, isn’t it, that the death of an old man in southern Turkey nearly 1700 years ago should stir so much anticipation and excitement among European children in 2021? This Monday, December 6, is the Feast of St Nicolas, the day the saint died in Myra, Turkey, in AD 343.  For Dutch children, the big day is the eve…