The Church Times Podcast

The Day That Went Missing by Richard Beard is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club. On the podcast this week, he talks to Sarah Meyrick, who has written this month’s Book Club essay about the memoir. The book, which won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography, is published by Vintage and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk/ Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at https://www.facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

On the podcast this week, Jo Swinney talks to Sarah Meyrick about A Place at The Table: Faith, hope and hospitality. The book is a joint project with Jo’s late mother, Miranda Harris, who died suddenly in October 2019. Mrs Harris and her husband, Peter, founded the Christian conservation charity A Rocha International. In an age when loneliness and isolation have reached unprecedented levels, the book calls for Christians to embrace the practice of hospitality — which can be simpler and more profound than is often imagined. “To be hospitable doesn’t require culinary excellence or matching cutlery — it doesn’t even require a home of one's own; true hospitality offers a welcome into imperfection and messiness, a place to belong and be embraced.” A Place at The Table is published by Hodder & Soughton at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.29) placeatthetable.info Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

This week’s podcast features talks from the final of the Theology Slam 2022, which took place on 27 September in St Edmund Roundhay, in Leeds, as part of the HeartEdge conference “Humbler Church, Bigger God”. Theology Slam is a competition to find engaging young voices who think theologically about the contemporary world. Its organised jointly by the Church Times, SCM Press, and HeartEdge. The first finalist to speak is Alex Clare-Young, a pioneer minister in the United Reformed Church, currently serving in Cambridge, who is in the final stages of submitting a thesis for a Ph.D. in queer theologies at the University of Birmingham. Alex, who is a trans non-binary person, spoke on the implications of the incarnation for how Christians think about the body. The second finalist is Victoria Turner, also a member of the URC, who is in the final stages of a Ph.D. in world Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, where she is exploring developments in Christian mission. Victoria spoke on the theme of justice in relation to Amos 5. The third finalist is Amanda Higgin, who is training as a Baptist minister at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, alongside working towards a Master’s degree in New Testament theology, with a focus on the Letter to the Hebrews. Amanda's talk was on the topic of recovery. Watch the whole event, including, judges’ feedback and Q&A, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9E4CHXphg4&ab_channel=ChurchTimes Read the winning talk at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/7-october/comment/opinion/theology-slam-winner-wandering-from-pain-to-healing Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Find out about forthcoming Church Times events at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/events Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader

To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek is the choice for this month's Church Times Book Club - and on the podcast this week, the author speaks to Rachel Mann (who has written this month's Book Club essay about it). The book is published by Canongate and is available from the Church Times Bookshop for £8.99. The Church Times Book Club is run in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Tickets are now on sale for the next Festival, which takes place in Winchester in February. For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://faithandliterature.hymnsam.co.uk Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About the book: To Calais In Ordinary Time is a work of historical fiction set in England in 1348. It covers the story of a group of travellers journeying towards Calais across England as the Black Death sweeps across Europe. Written in a way to capture the authenticity of spoken medieval English, the language is interspersed with Middle English words. The young noblewoman’s language is marked by Norman French, the learned proctor’s language is punctuated with Latinisms, and the language of the down-to-earth adventurous ploughman is more Saxon. It is a novel about life, love, death, and war, set during a time of turbulence and uncertainty across Europe. Picture credit: © MARZENA POGORSALY Music for the podcast is by Twisterium Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

On the podcast this week, Matt Rowland Hill talks to Sarah Meyrick about his critically acclaimed memoir, Original Sins. The book tells the story of growing up as the son of an Evangelical Baptist minister in South Wales and then Leighton Buzzard, fraught with bitter family conflict and fear of damnation. After rejecting religion in his late teens , he became addicted to crack and heroin, eventually being set on the path to recovery with the help of a Christian rehab charity. “They had a different style of Christianity to my parents’,” he says. “They felt that they were helping me because they were expressing God’s love, and that just blew my mind. . . “Did I then become the prodigal son and come back to Christianity? It would have made a very nice story if I had.” Original Sins is published by Chatto & Windus at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.29) Picture credit: Laura Lewis Music for the podcast is by Twisterium Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Dame Hilary Mantel, the acclaimed author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, has died aged 70, her publisher has announced. At an event at Launde Abbey in 2019, Dame Hilary reflected on the life of Thomas Cromwell and his place in the Reformation. The short talk that she gave at the start of the event is featured on this week’s podcast. It was recorded about a year before the publication of the final book in the triology, The Mirror & the Light (Fourth Estate) (Books, 12 June 2020). The full event, at which the Revd Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch also spoke, can be listened to https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/2-august/regulars/podcast/hilary-mantel-and-diarmaid-macculloch-at-launde-abbey-remembering-thomas-cromwell An edited record of their talks and conversation can be read at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/2-august/features/features/make-something-of-me-creating-thomas-cromwell Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

Since the death of Her Majesty the Queen last week, many have drawn attention to her deep Christian faith, which inspired dedicated, humble service during her 70-year reign. On the podcast this week, the Rt Revd Graham James, a former Bishop of Norwich, talks about the late Queen’s Christian faith and her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He has also written an article in this week’s Church Times, which can be read at https://www.churchtimes.co.uk. There is also extensive coverage of tributes, funeral plans, an obituary, and more. “One of the things that really struck me was that the Queen’s faith was interwoven entirely and completely with the rest of her life,” he says. “And I think it came out of an era in which she was formed in which the Book of Common Prayer was still the absolute bedrock of the Church of England, in which the assumption is that God is woven into part of human life and is not a leisure activity for weekends or something that appeals to only a section of the population. . . He says later in the interview: “The Queen did move with the times. . . she accommodated herself, without changing in herself, to a changing culture. But the one thing that she didn’t cease to do, which much of England had ceased to do during her reign, was go to church and speak of the importance of the Christian faith to her. “What we saw was a country that never wanted the Queen, let alone the rest of the Royal Family, to give up going to church, but wanted sometimes to do this on their behalf, because they saw in her a unity between Church and State, they saw in her, as a figurehead without political power, a means of creating harmony in the country. And I think instinctively people realised that came from a deeply held Christian conviction on her part.” Picture credit: Alamy Music for the podcast is by Twisterium. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

A Terrible Kindness, the debut novel by Jo Browning Wroe, is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club — and on the podcast this week, the author speaks to the Revd Malcolm Doney (who has written this month’s Book Club essay about it). The book is published by Faber & Faber at £14.99 (Church Times Bookshop £13.49). Jo Browning Wroe has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, and is Creative Writing Supervisor at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. A Terrible Kindness, a Sunday Times bestseller, was inspired by conversations that she had with two embalmers who had volunteered to help at the Aberfan disaster when they were young men in 1966, and from her own childhood experience of growing up at a crematorium in Birmingham where her father was a supervisor (fuller synopsis below). The Book Club podcast is a monthly series launched recently in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Jo Browning Wroe will be a speaker at the next festival, in February 2023. Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at https://www.facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About A Terrible Kindness: The fictional story of a newly qualified embalmer William Lavery, who, on hearing the news of the Aberfan disaster in 1966, volunteers to help. The experience alters him profoundly, forcing him to revisit the painful losses in his own life — the death of his father, the disappointment of a lost musical career, and an estranged relationship with his mother. The story charts William’s inner turmoil over the ensuing years: covering his attempts to find redemption by mending fractured relationships, reconnecting with music, and reaching out to others. The story ends with his return to the disaster site 17 years later. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.

The Revd Guy Hewitt is to be the first Racial Justice Director of the Church of England, it was announced this week. In April 2018, when he was the High Commissioner for Barbados to the United Kingdom, Mr Hewitt was interviewed on the Church Times Podcast about the campaign he led for thousands of members of the Windrush generation to be recognised as British citizens. He had written about it in the Church Times earlier that month, as the campaign was gathering pace (Comment, 13 April 2018). “The policy U-turn that the Government made in less than two weeks of this becoming an issue was, for me, a modern-day miracle,” he said in the interview. “It was unprecedented for a government to take such a drastic and radical change of position in such a time-frame.” Later in the interview, he said: “What we were in this for was to get justice for the Windrush generation. For me it’s not about recriminations or even who is at fault: it is about continuing to work forward to find a solution.” He concluded: “One of the roles of that the Church of England, that the Christian community, that the interfaith community can do is to find a way of reinforcing the love, the togetherness, the solidarity that exists. "This country has got to find a way, once and for all in the 21st century, when we are talking about a modern, global Britain, to be able to put aside all forms of discrimination and move forward as a single people, united under one Kingdom, which is Great Britain.”

Night of Fire by Colin Thubron is the choice for this month’s Church Times Book Club — and on the podcast this week, the author is interviewed by Francis Martin (who has written this month’s Book Club essay about it). Thubron is an acclaimed travel writer and novelist, whose eight novels and 11 works of non-fiction make up an oeuvre that transports readers around the globe, and deep into the human psyche. He is a former President of the Royal Society of Literature. As well as talking about Night of Fire (synopsis below), the conversation explores the relationship between travel writing and fiction, faith and neuroscience, and the part played by doubt in the creative process. The conversation was recorded at Colin Thubron’s home in west London. This is the fourth Book Club podcast, a monthly series launched recently in association with the Church Times Festival of Faith and Literature. Night of Fire is published by Vintage at £8.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.09). Sign up to receive the free Book Club email once a month. Featuring discussion questions, podcasts and discounts on each book: churchtimes.co.uk/newsletter-signup Discuss this month’s book at facebook.com/groups/churchtimesbookclub About Night of Fire: A fire spreads through a house, threatening to engulf the six tenants: a failed priest, an atheist neurosurgeon, and an obsessive photographer, along with a naturalist, a schoolboy, and a traveller. Each has lived a fascinating life, conjured in Thubron’s lyrical prose. But, as the inferno courses through the building, we start to notice inexplicable resonances between the lives of the tenants: motifs that recur and details that repeat, and that surely cannot all be explained as coincidence. Try 10 issues of the Church Times for £10 or get two months access to our website and apps, also for £10. Go to churchtimes.co.uk/new-reader.