There are fewer second-hand bookshops these days which means that scrounging around for good old second-hand books is much more difficult and searching the net is not really the equivalent. The thing to do is to have a good search wherever you find a pile of old books. Continue reading
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We are hearing quite a lot at the moment about budget deficits and the national debt, and doubtless this will intensify in the next few months. Our politicians have a habit of confusing the two and economists insist on expressing them as a percentage of GDP, so we can miss out on knowing what the magnitude of the debt really is. Continue reading
By law, the parish churches of the Church of England could impose an annual levy on the inhabitants of the parish for the recovery of their annual repair costs. Those having to pay would be householders with the house over a certain rateable value. St Martin’s was, and still is, the Parish Church of Birmingham and the levy was determined at the St Martin’s Annual Vestry Meeting.
This meeting was usually held on Easter Tuesday and any inhabitant of the Town could attend. Continue reading
Lantern slides are a very good source for the depiction of angels. This is not surprising given that Church halls were frequently used for lantern shows.
So here is a selection, mainly rather beautiful, but in one case gruesome and beautiful at the same time.
Two of our slides, “Angels are near” and “the Spirits’ Flight” were used by Margaret Barker in her book “An extraordinary gathering of angels”.
