Thank you to Warwick Words History Festival for hosting a great event on the history of fairies - excellent audience questions, and all my books sold out! 📚🧚‍♀️

Just got this to review - yet another history of fairies, just published 🧚‍♀️

We are actively looking for new proposals for Elements in Folklore so if you have an idea for a shorter book (max 30k words) on ANY aspect of folklore, please do get in touch with me or Tabitha

Forcing myself to read a book I’m supposed to be reviewing (but which I think is dross and don’t want to waste my life reading) by bringing it as my only reading matter on a long train journey 😩

Yes, that's true in the UK too - although the turnover and fragmentation of such churches is often quite rapid, leading to suspicions that it's often the same people moving around from church to church

There's some of this in the RC Church in the UK but not so much in the CofE, as it's very difficult administratively for priests from other jurisdictions to get permission to officiate in the CofE

We've had exactly the same thing in the CofE - people being nominated as bishops then pulling out, dioceses being unable to appoint etc. People are realising it's a completely impossible role no normal person would want to do

Thanks!

Yes, this is a specifically US issue I think - churches in the UK (unless they’re some minuscule sect) are seldom politically aligned, and clergy generally are broadly left-wing

I don’t think there’s much difference in the UK, at least among mainline Methodists, Baptists, Presbys etc - indeed, they’re usually further advanced in decline than the Anglicans and Catholics

If anyone happens to be around in Warwick on Thursday evening for the history festival (or indeed for any other reason...) and wants to meet up, let me know

Thanks!

The high watermark of secular optimism has long since passed, and nothing has replaced it. And the institutional decline of the church shows no sign of slowing down. What now for Christianity in Europe? Whether you are a believer or not, this- from a historian of belief- is well worth a read.

Tomorrow! There are still tickets left:

I'm afraid it's not something I've examined beyond Bury St Edmunds, I'm afraid, although I suspect iconography of St Francis may have been largely confined to Franciscan churches and thus now lost by definition