Wednesday, September 26, 2018

To THE KEYS...

...which is the name of the Catholic Writers Guild of England and Wales, meeting in London. It was a hassle to get there - tube strike on the Piccadilly Line etc - but so good to arrive and be immediately among friends and colleagues. It really is a Guild - something more than a fellowship, more than a meeting of friends, more than gathering of like-minded people engagedin common endeavours...we are friendly, useful, and helpful to one another in the way that members of a Guild should be, but there's a lot more...this evening's chat included discussion of illustrations for a new book, exchange of ideas on recent projects, plus discussion of the splendid recent Liverpool Eucharistic Congress...

We currently meet at Farm Street church for our monthly Mass, going on afterwards to a nearby restaurant where a room is booked for supper, and then back to the  panelled Hall at Farm Street for the lecture. This evening's was about Hilaire Belloc - specifically, his love of Sussex, and finishing with that haunting poem -  and was excellent. A good discussion afterwards, tackling his horrid anti-semitism, his talents, his undoubted pariotism, his loathing of all things German including Nazism,  and the sorrows of his life (two sons killed, one in the First World War, one in the Second...) and more...

The new Master of the Guild is to be Kevin Turley, an excellent choice.  You can read some of his work here  and here...


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