The stories that help us make sense of our lives and faith

There have been many famous letters and letter-writers in history One thinks immediately of Cicero who made it an art form Then of course we have St Paul who filled his letters to early Christian communities with advice and doctrine news from the front and occasional scoldings One also thin

Travel has been around since Adam and Eve were forced to leave the Garden of Eden Noah built an ark and Abram also on God rsquo s instructions took a look at all of the land before his eyes Travel writing was invented by Homer and Virgil and the Synoptic Gospels may have helped revive the genre

Two new books on Pope Francis; neither can be considered a true biography.

I recently traveled to the London Book Fair, and I stayed in Bloomsbury, the area in central London that over half a century ago was the heart of British publishing. Over the course of four days I visited the crisp and well-appointed London Review of Books bookshop across from the British Museum, as

“Nobody ever wrote a more unaffectedly elegant English,” a critic once wrote of Evelyn Waugh.

Graham Greene has had more malevolent biographers than anyone is due.

Frank Capra's 'It's a Wonderful Life' offers a profound understanding of the Gospels.

Charles Dickens and the London poor