42 million blog readers and why 42 is the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything’

Title 42, from John Vernon Lord’s sketchbook

Patrick Comerford

I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog, although the figures have slowed down this month after record-breaking and overpowering statistics last month. These figures passed 42 million late yesterday afternoon (24 June 2026), having passed the 41 million mark two weeks earlier (9 June 2026), the 40 million mark at the end of last month (28 May 2026) and 39 million a week earlier (22 May 2026). These figures passed the million mark six times last month (May 2026) and four times the month before (April 2026).

These viewing and reading figures are overwhelming and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 21 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.

The total number of hits last month was the highest ever, with over 5.8 million hits in May 2026, compared with previous one-month highs in March 2026 (over 4.5 million) and April (almost 4.4 million). May’s figure of over 5.8 million was astonishing, considering it took almost 11 years, from July 2010 until 27 March 2021, to reach what I then thought was the staggering figure of 5 million hits.

I first began blogging back in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the ten days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were last month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, and one was in February:

• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)

• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)

The daily average was over 187,000 throughout May, but that figure was distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month, but they are about 60,000-70,000 a day in June, with over 1.6 million hits in June so far. Yet, ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.

The London Marathon in 2024 raised £42 million exclusively through the JustGiving platform

To put this latest figure of 42 million into perspective:

Jakarta is the world's most populous city, with an estimated population of almost 42 million residents. The Indonesian capital city has officially surpassed Tokyo to become the world's largest megacity, according to the UN World Urbanisation Prospects report.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on the international community to strengthen support for the nearly 42 million refugees worldwide who have fled their homes to escape conflict, violence or persecution.

An estimated 42 million people across six IGAD member states – Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, the Sudan and Uganda – face high levels of acute hunger.

In the US, 42 million people rely on Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) or food stamps to put food on the table. They include 16 million children, 8 million people over the age of 60, and million veterans.

The French data protection authority (CNIL) fined the telecoms provider Free Mobile €42 million for GDPR and data breach failings.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Barclays Bank £42 million due to historical lax management of financial crime risks.

A record-breaking £42 million was raised exclusively through the JustGiving platform during the London Marathon in 2024.

The World Health Organization (WHO) launched an appeal for $42 million to sustain essential health services and trauma care across Ukraine.

But, instead, let’s just humour ourselves with the figure 42 instead for a few moments.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the number 42 is the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer the size of a small planet was built from organic components and named ‘Earth’.

The Ultimate Question, ‘What do you get when you multiply six by nine’, is found by Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in the second book of the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. This appeared first in the radio play and later in the book versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It has been pointed out that 6 X 9 = 42 is in fact true … in base 13. That’s because 54=4*13+2 while ‘forty-two’ is 4*10+2. However, Adams claims not to have known that when he wrote it.

The fourth book in the series, the novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, has 42 chapters. According to the novel Mostly Harmless, 42 is the street address of Stavromula Beta.

In 1994, Adams created the 42 Puzzle, a game based on the number 42. There is some speculation that he chose the number 42 because it is also significant in Lewis Carrol’s Hunting of the Snark. But Adams says he picked the number simply as a joke, with no deeper meaning.

Lewis Carroll had famously recurring numbers in his works. He used Rule 42 in both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the introduction to The Hunting of the Snark, and Snark had a reference to the Baker having 42 boxes of clothes packed. Lewis Carroll was 42 when he wrote Snark, there are 42 illustrations in Wonderland and in Wonderland the King of Hearts announces in court: ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court’.

Carroll lived in room number six, accessible through the seventh stairs in Christ Church, Oxford.

The number 42 also appears in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake – as ‘fortytwo hairs off his uncrown’ and ‘as a taste for storik’s fortytooth’.

As for 42 million, 42 million minutes add up to approximately 79 years, 10 months and 7 days, using standard calendar averages. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take almost 80 years, from July or August 1946, to reach today’s figure of 42 million.

I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 100-120 people on average continue to read my daily prayer diary on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 to 840 or more people each week.

This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 42 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 100-120 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.

Greyfriars in East Oxford, a convent with a publishing house, and two other religious sites in Oxford

The Church of Saint Edmund and Saint Frideswide or Greyfriars on Iffley Road in East Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During my walkabout in Oxford last week, by the river, through Iffley in East Oxford, and in the city centre, I had opportunities to see from the outside four religious houses that have interesting places in the story of religious communities and community life in Oxford.

Greyfriars has one of the most distinctive buildings in Oxford; it is the only flint-stone Norman-style building in the city, and its green spire is prominent along the Iffley Road in East Oxford. Greyfriars is a Catholic parish and a Franciscan friary, and until 2008 it was also a permanent private hall of the University of Oxford.

The original Greyfriars church and friary in Oxford was founded by the Franciscans in the marshy St Ebbe’s area of the city in 1224. The mediaeval friars in Oxford included the theologian Robert Grosseteste, also Bishop of Lincoln and the first Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Other early Franciscans in mediaeval Greyfriars in Oxford included Roger Bacon, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and the Antipope Alexander V, who was from Neapolis in Crete.

The mediaeval friary was in the south-west corner of the city walls. Its footprint was extensive, running between the present-day Paradise Street and the Westgate Oxford Shopping Centre. The Franciscan order divided into two branches in 1517: the friars who had been living in city-convents and teaching in universities became known as Conventuals, while the friars who lived a more eremitical life became known as Observants; the Capuchins developed in 1528.

The original Greyfriars in Oxford continued as an educational and religious centre in the Middle Ages before being dissolved at the Tudor Reformations in 1538, and the Capuchins did not return to Oxford until 1905.

Greyfriars Church or the Church of Saint Edmund and Saint Frideswide on Iffley Road was built in 1910-1911 as a chapel of ease to the Jesuits of the Church of Saint Aloysius, Woodstock Road. The dedication recalls Saint Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, who gives his name to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and Saint Frideswide, the patron of Oxford. It succeeded Saint Ignatius chapel in St Clement’s (1793) as the principal site of Roman Catholic worship in east Oxford.

The church was designed by the priest-architect William Edward (Father Benedict) Williamson (1868-1948). The builders were Hunt & Sons of High Wycombe. Williamson’s other works include the Jesuit church of Saint Ignatius in Stamford Hill, north London, and a range of monastic buildings at Farnborough Abbey in Hampshire – both, like his church in Oxford, in a neo-Romanesque style.

The church is listed Grade II for its architectural interest as an austerely dignified neo-Romanesque church by an accomplished architect, with a particularly serene and well-proportioned interior. The church is at the north end of the long range of buildings at Greyfriars on the west side of Iffley Road and is aligned north-south. The church is built in a plain neo-Norman style. The main entrance is through the tower, with an organ gallery above.

Meanwhile, the Capuchin Franciscans had returned to Oxford in 1905 when they founded Saint Anselm’s Friary, and it was recognised by the university as a house of studies in 1910. The Jesuits transferred responsibility for the Church of Saint Edmund and Saint Frideswide on Iffley Road in 1928 to the Capuchins who already ran a student hostel at Grosseteste House in a pair of nearby houses on Iffley Road. The present friary buildings, designed by the Oxford architect Gilbert Gardner under the supervision of Father Cuthbert Hess, were built in 1930-1931 to the south of the church.

The Capuchins first named the house Grosseteste House after the first head of the original Greyfriars. When the present building was completed in 1930, the name of Greyfriars was adopted once more.

Greyfriars became a private hall in the university in 1957. Greyfriars had an unusual position in Oxford, and the university hall and Franciscan friary were part of the same institution and coexisted on the same site. The friars and the students mingled on the site and shared mealtimes. The hall had a tradition of noted theology academics, but students were in a range of disciplines, including English, history, theology, geography and law. Greyfriars was closely linked with Balliol College, with a long-standing tradition of sporting links.

In October 2007, the Capuchins announced they planned to close Greyfriars as a permanent private hall, for financial and personnel reasons. All students and prospective applicants were transferred to Regent’s Park College, and the hall closed in June 2008, despite a last-minute attempt by the Holy See to save the hall. At the time Greyfriars closed, the fellows included Aidan Nichols and honorary fellows included Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham. There was surprise in some circles that the Greyfriars students did not migrate to Saint Benet’s Hall, the Benedictine PPH, or Blackfriars Hall, the Dominican PPH; Saint Benet’s Hall closed in 2022. The buildings continue to house the friary.

The Fairacres Road entrance to the Convent of the Incarnation off Iffley Road, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

As I was walking back from the River and Donnington Bridge towards Iffley Road, I found myself at the back gate of the Convent of the Incarnation on Fairacres Road, although the main convent entrance is at Daubeny Road. The Convent of the Incarnation – known as Fairacres – is home to around 15 sisters, and their work includes prayer, hospitality, study. And publishing.

The Sisters of the Love of God began in 1906, and their first convent was a small house in East Oxford. They moved a little further from the centre of Oxford in 1911, the present chapel was built in 1923.

As the community numbers grew from 1928 into the 1970s, new houses opened in Hemel Hampstead, at Burwash in Sussex and near Staplehurst in Kent, and a house opened in New Zealand in 1995. By 2005, falling numbers and increasing age led to closing the other houses, and community life since then has been centred in Oxford, where their story began.

Later this week, on the Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist (Wednesday 24 June 2026), Sister Christine (South) will be blessed and installed as the new Reverend Mother of the Fairacres Convent.

The community established a small publishing house, SLG Press, in 1967 and produces a journal with short theological papers twice a year, the Fairacres Chronicle. The main publishing activity is a list of over 200 short books on prayer and the spiritual life, including a significant collection of Syriac patristics works and a series of contemplative poetry. The authors include AM Allchin, Professor Sebastian Brock, Father John Chryssavgis, Professor Andrew Louth, Professor John McGuckin, Archbishop Michael Ramsey, Sister Benedicta Ward, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Archbishop Rowan Williams.

The Convent of the Incarnation off Iffley Road is home to the Sisters of the Love of God and SLG Press (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

At the corner of Holywell Street, St Cross Road and Longwall Street, a plaque to four Catholic Martyrs was erected at 100 Holywell Street in October 2008 and reads: ‘Near this spot George Nichols, Richard Yaxley, Thomas Belson, Humphrey Pritchard, were executed for their Catholic Faith, 5 July 1589.

The plaque was organised by Dr Joseph Shaw of Saint Benet's Hall, with permission from Merton College, the owner of the house. The four men are also remembered on the plaque commemorating all the martyrs of the Reformation, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, erected in the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin on 19 June 2008.

All four men were hanged at Holywell Gallows in Oxford in 1589 were Roman Catholics living in Oxford. The first two were priests, and the second two were laymen.

Father George Nichols was born in Oxford in 1550 and studied at Brasenose College. He was ordained in Reims in France in 1583, before being sent back to Oxford. Father Richard Yaxley (alias Tankard) Yaxley was born in Boston, Lincolnshire. He was ordained in Reims In 1585 and returned to England in 1586.

Thomas Belson was born at Brill in Buckinghamshire and studied at Saint Mary Hall, Oxford, and at the English College in Reims in 1584. He was a prisoner in the Tower of London for a while, before returning to Oxford, where George Nichols was his confessor.

Humphrey Pritchard, or Prichard or ap Richard, or ap Richard ap Gruffydd or Griffin or Griffith, was a Welsh servant at the Catherine Wheel Inn in Oxford, and a tailor. He was said to have served the Catholics who came to the inn in every way possible during the 12 or 14 years before his execution. Some Catholic priests in Oxford were hunted down at the Catherine Wheel Inn in Magdalen Street, which was owned by a Catholic widow.

All four men named on the plaque were arrested at the Catherine Wheel Inn. The priests were held in Bocardo in Cornmarket Street, then the city gaol, and the two laymen in Oxford Castle, then the county gaol, before being sent to London, where they were questioned and tortured in the Bridewell and in the Tower of London.

The four were returned to Oxford on 30 June 1589. The two priests were convicted of high treason and hanged, drawn, and quartered at Holywell Gallows, and their parts parboiled in a cauldron before being fixed to the wall of Oxford Castle, where they were mutilated by Protestants. Two days later the heads and quarters were removed by the authorities and placed on high poles over the four town gates of Oxford. The two laymen who had been convicted of felony were simply hanged. All four martyrs were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987.

A plaque to four Catholic Martyrs at 100 Holywell Street, at the corner with St Cross Road and Longwall Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Grandpont House, near Folly Bridge, takes its name from a long causeway on the River Thmas known as Grandpont that once stretched along almost the full length of Abingdon Road.

Grandpont House sits on stone arches over a water channel off the River Thames. It was built in 1785 for Sir William Elias Taunton (1744-1825), the City Solicitor and Town Clerk of Oxford. The Taunton family owned Grandpont House until 1847, when it was acquired by Brasenose College. It was the home in the 1850s and 1860s of Thomas Randall (1805-1887), a tailor who may have been the inspiration for the Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Prince Hassan, son of the Khedive of Egypt, lived in the house in 1869-1872 while he was studying law at Brasenose. The chaplain of Brasenose, the Revd HC Wace, was living at Grandpont House In the early 20th century. Another Brasenose Fellow, William Holdsworth, Vinerian Professor of Law, was living there From 1922 to 1944.

Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, who spent five summers in England, was keen to open an Opus Dei in Oxford. He visited Grandpont House in 1958 and the house and grounds were bought in April 1959. Grandpont House is one of several properties which is owned and operated by Netherhall Educational Association, which is linked with Opus Dei.

Grandpont House was bought by Opus Dei after Josemaría Escrivá visited in 1958 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Christmas 2025-2026: 7, Wednesday 31 December 2025, New Year’s Eve

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Inchicore, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

We have come to the end of December, the end of the year, the end of 2025. This is New Year’s Eve, the seventh day of Christmas and tomorrow is New Year’s Day.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Wyclif (1384), an early, pre-Reformation reformer. Before today begins, before I even begin to look back on the past year or to start thinking of any New Year’s resolutions, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Christ in Majesty’ by Sir Ninian Comper in Southwark Cathedral, surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 1: 1-18 (NRSVA):

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me”.’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

The Four Cardinal Virtues and the Three Theological Virtues … windows in the Church of Sant Jaume in Barcelona (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

‘To begin at the beginning’ – these are the opening lines of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954).

Or I might begin with words from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. In Chapter 12, the White Rabbit puts on his spectacles.

‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker,’ the second of his Four Quartets, is set at the end of the year and opens:

In my beginning is my end.

It is December, and he goes on to say:

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon …

The opening words at the beginning of a play, a novel or a poem – or for that matter, a sermon – can be important for holding the reader’s or the listener’s attention and telling me what to expect. Begin as you mean to go on.

So it is surprising to some that Charles Dickens waits until the second sentence in David Copperfieldto say: ‘To begin my life with the beginning of my life …’

At the very end of the year, the Gospel reading at the Eucharist is the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …’

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the seven swans a-swimming on this day as figurative representations of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit or the seven virtues – Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord – or they might even represent the seven churches of the Book of Revelation.

Sir Ninian Comper’s East Window in Southwark Cathedral shows Christ in Majesty in the centre light, with the Virgin Mary on the left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right. Christ sits enthroned above the world surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord.

Christ is depicted in the window as a youthful figure, with a globe or the world below his feet bearing seven stars representing the seven churches in the Book of Revelation:

• Ephesus (Revelation 2: 1-7): known for toil and not patient endurance, and separating themselves from the wicked; admonished for having abandoned their first love (2: 4).

• Smyrna (Revelation 2: 8-11): admired for its affliction and poverty; about to suffer persecution (2: 10).

• Pergamum (Revelation 2: 12-17): living where ‘Satan’s throne is; needs to repent of allowing heretics to teach (2: 16).

• Thyatira (Revelation 2: 18-29): known for its love, faith, service, and patient endurance; tolerates the teachings of a beguiling and prophet who refuses to repent (2: 20).

• Sardis (Revelation 3: 1-6): admonished for being spiritually dead, despite its reputation; told to wake up and repent (3: 2-3).

• Philadelphia (Revelation 3: 7-13): known for its patient endurance and keeping God’s word (3: 10).

• Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-22): is neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, called on to be earnest and repent (3: 19).

The cardinal virtues comprise a set of four virtues recognised in Classical writings and are usually paired with the three theological virtues.

The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues on which all other virtues hinge: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The three theological virtues are: faith, hope and love. Together, the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues comprise what are known as the seven virtues.

Plato is the first philosopher to discuss the cardinal virtues when he discusses them in the Republic. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle writes: ‘The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom.’ Cicero, like Plato, limits the list to four virtues.

Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas adapted them, and Saint Ambrose was the first to use the term ‘cardinal virtues.’

The three Theological Virtues are: Faith, Hope and Love (see I Corinthians 13).

In his King’s Speech on Christmas Day this year, King Charles pondered the state of the world today and referred to the ways of living that ‘are treasured by all the great faiths and provide us with deep wells of hope: of resilience in the face of adversity; peace through forgiveness; simply getting to know our neighbours and, by showing respect to one another, creating new friendships.

‘Indeed, as our world seems to spin ever faster, our journeying may pause, to quieten our minds – in TS Eliot’s words “At the still point of the turning world” – and allow our souls to renew.

‘In this, with the great diversity of our communities, we can find the strength to ensure that right triumphs over wrong.’

As we step into the New Year, we know that our world is a deeply uncertain place. Few of us predicted the events of the last few years – the return of Covid-19 in many new strains, a major land war in Europe, the conflicts on many fronts in the Middle East, the unresolved refugee crises, the rise of the far-right across Europe, the return of Donald Trump to a second term of office … Where shall I begin to imagine what lies ahead in 2025?

King Charles was quoting from TS Eliot’s Burnt Norton. But once again I call to mind East Coker:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark …
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God …

Yet, in this apocalyptic, visionary, poem, Eliot is neither all doom nor all gloom. He talks about Faith

… pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

And he concludes East Coker:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Harold’s Cross, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 31 December 2025):

The theme this week (28 December 2025 to 3 January 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Mother and Child’ (pp 14-15). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Imran Englefield, Individual Giving Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 31 December 2025) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we give thanks for the work of USPG over the past year. For every life touched, every family supported, and every community strengthened, we give thanks and pray that your love continues to shine throughout the world.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus:

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was circumcised
in obedience to the law for our sake
and given the Name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,
to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit,
and to proclaim him as the Saviour of the world;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Happy New Year

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Swan … once claimed to be the oldest pub in Lichfield, but has since been turned into a restaurant and apartments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 7, Tuesday 31 December 2024, New Year’s Eve

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Inchicore, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘seven swans a-swimming, six geese a-laying, five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

We have come to the end of December, the end of the year, the end of 2024. This is New Year’s Eve, the seventh day of Christmas and the Hanukkah holiday continues today. Tomorrow is New Year’s Day.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Wyclif (1384), an early, pre-Reformation reformer. Before today begins, before I even begin to look back on the past year or to start thinking of New Year’s resolutions, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Christ in Majesty’ by Sir Ninian Comper in Southwark Cathedral, surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 1: 1-18 (NRSVA):

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me”.’) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

The Four Cardinal Virtues and the Three Theological Virtues … windows in the Church of Sant Jaume in Barcelona (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

‘To begin at the beginning’ – these are the opening lines of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954).

Or I might begin with words from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. In Chapter 12, the White Rabbit puts on his spectacles.

‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker,’ the second of his Four Quartets, is set at the end of the year and opens:

In my beginning is my end.

It is December, and he goes on to say:

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon …

The opening words at the beginning of a play, a novel or a poem – or for that matter, a sermon – can be important for holding the reader’s or the listener’s attention and telling me what to expect. Begin as you mean to go on.

That is why I am surprised that Charles Dickens waits until the second sentence in David Copperfieldto say: ‘To begin my life with the beginning of my life …’

At the very end of the year, the Gospel reading at the Eucharist is the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …’

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the seven swans a-swimming on this day as figurative representations of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit or the seven virtues – Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord – or they might even represent the seven churches of the Book of Revelation.

Sir Ninian Comper’s East Window in Southwark Cathedral shows Christ in Majesty in the centre light, with the Virgin Mary on the left and Saint John the Evangelist on the right. Christ sits enthroned above the world surrounded by seven doves, symbolising the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord.

Christ is depicted in the window as a youthful figure, with a globe or the world below his feet bearing seven stars representing the seven churches in the Book of Revelation:

• Ephesus (Revelation 2: 1-7): known for toil and not patient endurance, and separating themselves from the wicked; admonished for having abandoned their first love (2: 4).

• Smyrna (Revelation 2: 8-11): admired for its affliction and poverty; about to suffer persecution (2: 10).

• Pergamum (Revelation 2: 12-17): living where ‘Satan’s throne is; needs to repent of allowing heretics to teach (2: 16).

• Thyatira (Revelation 2: 18-29): known for its love, faith, service, and patient endurance; tolerates the teachings of a beguiling and prophet who refuses to repent (2: 20).

• Sardis (Revelation 3: 1-6): admonished for being spiritually dead, despite its reputation; told to wake up and repent (3: 2-3).

• Philadelphia (Revelation 3: 7-13): known for its patient endurance and keeping God’s word (3: 10).

• Laodicea (Revelation 3: 14-22): is neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, called on to be earnest and repent (3: 19).

The cardinal virtues comprise a set of four virtues recognised in Classical writings and are usually paired with the three theological virtues.

The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues on which all other virtues hinge: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The three theological virtues are: faith, hope and love. Together, the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues comprise what are known as the seven virtues.

Plato is the first philosopher to discuss the cardinal virtues when he discusses them in the Republic. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle writes: ‘The forms of Virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, prudence, wisdom.’ Cicero, like Plato, limits the list to four virtues.

Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas adapted them, and Saint Ambrose was the first to use the term ‘cardinal virtues.’

The three Theological Virtues are: Faith, Hope and Love (see I Corinthians 13).

As we step into the New Year, we know that our world is a deeply uncertain place. Few of us predicted the events of the last few years – the return of Covid-19 in many new strains, a major land war in Europe, the conflicts on many fronts in the Middle East, the unresolved refugee crises, the rise of the far-right across Europe, the dreaded return of Donald Trump to a second term of office … Where shall I begin to imagine what lies ahead in 2025?

Once again, I call to mind TS Eliot in East Coker:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark …
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God …

Yet, in this apocalyptic, visionary, poem, Eliot is neither all doom nor all gloom. He talks about Faith

… pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

And he concludes East Coker:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

‘On the Seventh Day of Christmas … seven swans-a-swimming’ on the Grand Canal at Harold’s Cross, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 31 December 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘We Believe, We Belong: Nicene Creed’. This theme was introduced on Sunday by Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 31 December 2024) invites us to pray:

As we prepare to celebrate the new year, may the truth of this Creed continue to inspire us, reminding us that you, O God, have revealed yourself fully in Christ, the Word made flesh. Empower us to live in the fullness of this revelation, proclaiming your love to the world.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Collect on the Eve of the Naming and Circumcision of Jesus:

Almighty God,
whose blessed Son was circumcised
in obedience to the law for our sake
and given the Name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,
to worship him in the freedom of the Spirit,
and to proclaim him as the Saviour of the world;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Happy New Year

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The Swan … once claimed to be the oldest pub in Lichfield, but has since been turned into a restaurant and apartments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The Greeks have a word for it: 46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

Pavlos Beach in Platanias, east of Rethymnon … but where does the beach start and where does it end? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

As meteorologists calculate the seasons, we have come to the end of summer this evening, and autumn begins tomorrow.

TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker,’ the second of his Four Quartets, ends with the words: ‘In my end is my beginning.’

But it opens with the lines:

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation …

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane …
…
Wait for the early owl.

In the opening verses of the Book of Revelation, Saint John is in a cave in Patmos when he hears the words: ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty, Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Ἄλφα καὶ τὸ Ὦ, λέγει κύριος ὁ θεός, ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, ὁ παντοκράτωρ (Revelation 1: 8).

How do we begin our beginnings?

In Alice in Wonderland (Chapter 12), the White Rabbit put on his spectacles.

‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.

‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’

Where are our beginnings?

And where are our ends?

‘Αρχή Ακτής, Beginning of the Beach’ … a sign at Pavlos Beach in Platanias, east of Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There is a signboard with two notices at the same place at the entrance to or exit from the beach at Platanias, east of Rethymnon, where I have spent weeks on end over the years.

On one side, the sign reads: Αρχή Ακτής, Beginning of the Beach.

On the other side, the sign reads: Τέλος Ακτής, End of the Beach.

The Greek Ακτής (aktís) on that sign on the beach in Platanias might be translated more literally as ‘Shore’ rather than ‘Beach’, and perhaps the word Παραλία is used more often for beach in Greek

In some ways, those signs also came to symbolise my regular visits to Rethymnon since the 1980s, the beginning and the end of holidays in a part of Greece that is now so like to me.

Each day usually includes a stroll by the town beach beside the old Venetian harbour, or along the long stretch of white sands along the shore at Platanias, enjoying the sunshine, the blue skies and the deep blue sea. And so it was when I returned to Rethymnon – and to Pavlos Beach in Platanias – three months ago.

The Greek word αρχή (archí) on that beach sign in Platanias means not just start but head or chief – the beginning or source or first authority in something. It gives us many word in Greek that easy to understand in English, such as αποξαρχής (apoxarchís, ‘from the beginning’) and αρχέτυπο (archétypo, ‘archetype’).

It is also related to many words we are familiar with in the English language, such as:

• archaeology (αρχαιολογία), first used in English in 1782 for talking scientifically about our beginnings;

• archipelago (αρχιπέλαγος, archipelagos), or the chief sea, or head of the sea;

• architect (αρχιτέκτονας, architektonas), the chief builder or chief carpenter, and first used in English in the 1560s for master builder or director of works.

The Greek word τέλος (telos) on that beach sign in Platanias is also familiar in the English language in words such as:

• telescope (τηλεσκόπος, teleskópos), meaning seeing to the end or far-seeing, from the Greek words τῆλε (têle, afar) and σκοπέω (skopéō I look at). In a similar way, a bishop is an ἐπίσκοπος (epískopos) or overseer, someone who looks over or after the people.

• telephone (τηλέφωνο, telephono), sound or words from the end or from afar, from the Ancient Greek words τῆλε (têle, afar) and φωνή (phōnḗ, voice or sound).

• telegram (τηλεγράφημα, telegráphima): the suffix comes from the ancient Greek -γραμμα (-gramma), from γράμμα (grámma, written character, letter, that which is drawn), and from γράφω (gráphō, to scratch, to scrape, to graze).

‘Τέλος Ακτής, End of the Beach’ … the other side of the sign at Pavlos Beach in Platanias, east of Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Reading signs in another country and another language requires more than literal translations.

The hundreds of nails stuck into one old poles in Crete may mystify many a first-time visitor to Crete. But they remain from old notices pinned or nailed to any available space as soon as someone dies, but removed after the funeral.

Death, denial and a white seashore are images that remind me of the poem ‘Denial’ (Άρνηση) by Giorgos Seferis (1900-1971), first published in 1931 in his collection Turning Point (Στροφή, Strophe).

Seferis received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. After the colonels’ coup in 1967, however, he went into voluntary seclusion and many of his poems were banned, including the musical versions written and arranged by the composer Mikis Theodorakis.

‘Denial’ came to be the anthem of resistance to the colonel and was sung by the enormous crowds lining the streets of Athens at the poet’s funeral in September 1971. He had become a popular hero for his resistance to the regime.

Άρνηση

Στο περιγιάλι το κρυφό κι άσπρο σαν περιστέρι διψάσαμε το μεσημέρι· μα το νερό γλυφό.
Πάνω στην άμμο την ξανθή γράψαμε τ' όνομά της· ωραία που φύσηξεν ο μπάτης και σβήστηκε η γραφή.
Mε τι καρδιά, με τι πνοή, τι πόθους και τι πάθος, πήραμε τη ζωή μας· λάθος! κι αλλάξαμε ζωή.

‘Denial’ (translated by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard)

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life; a mistake!
So we changed our life.

Previous word: 45, democracy, δημοκρατία

Next word: 47, apocalypse, ἀποκάλυψις

Nails remaining from old death notices on the hill leading from Platanias up to Tsesmes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, series to be continued.

Alice Liddell and her ‘curioser’ childhood friendships in Oxford with Lewis Carroll

The ‘Alice’ stories began on 4 July 1862 on a boat trip from Folly Bridge in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I am musing over these few days about Alice in Wonderland and how the Alice stories began on a boat trip in Oxford on 4 July 1862, when Lewis Carroll first told the ‘Alice’ stories to Alice Liddell and her two sisters.

Alice’s Day is an annual city-wide celebration in Oxford on the first Saturday in July of all things about Alice in Wonderland, and this year it takes place today (6 July 2024).

There have been events in venues across Oxford today, including the Museum of Oxford, the History of Science Museum, the Oxford Botanic Garden, the Weston Library, Alice’s Shop, and the Story Museum. They include theatre, puppetry, crafting, trails, dance, games, lectures and more, to celebrate one of literature’s – and one of Oxford’s – best-loved story heroes.

Mark Davies gave an illustrated talk in Saint Giles Church on ‘Alice’s Adventures in Oxford’, discussing Lewis Carroll and his books. He explained the relevance of this day, revealed the real people, places and events that inspired the Alice books, and highlighted Lewis Carroll’s less well-known connections with local institutions such as Lucy’s Iron Foundry, Saint John’s College, and a floating chapel on the Oxford Canal.

Mark Davies is a local Oxford historian, a trustee of Lewis Carroll Society, and the author of Alice in Waterland, Alice’s Oxford on Foot and Stories of Oxford Castle.

The Revd Charles Dodgson – aka Lewis Carroll – was a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The day’s events and programmes commemorate an important moment for children’s literature and for Oxford. On that afternoon on 4 July 1862, the Revd Charles Dodgson, a mathematician and a don at Christ Church, took 10-year-old Alice and her sisters Edith (then 8) and Lorina (13), daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, on a boat trip from Folly Bridge to Godstow, where they had a picnic.

There, they begged him to tell her a story, so he invented tales of a girl called Alice who had fantastical adventures. He wrote this up for her in a fine manuscript entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground in 1864. Under the pen name Lewis Carroll it was published in an expanded version as Alice Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, followed by Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.

Alice became one of the most popular, most widely quoted and most widely translated children’s book ever written. It marked the birth of modern children’s literature.

After Alice, children’s books became less stuffy and more entertaining. Oxford became a world centre of children’s stories and an inspirational home to many authors and illustrators, including Kenneth Grahame, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and Philip Pullman.

‘The city of dreaming spires’ … a view of Oxford across Christ Church Meadow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Lewis Carroll is the pen-name chosen by the Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898: Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, the Latin for Lutwidge, his middle name, while Carroll is an Irish surname similar to Carolus, the Latin form of his first name Charles.

On this Alice Day, it should not be forgotten that Charles Dodgson had strong Irish family connections, and that he came from a clerical family rooted in the Church of Ireland family and with Tractarian sympathies.

And I was reminded some time ago that he had some distant – very distant – and curious – very curious – connections with descendants of the Comerford family.

Lewis Carroll’s great-grandfather Charles Dodgson complained as Bishop of Ossory of the poor stabling at the Palace in Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Lewis Carroll, or the Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898) was the great-grandson of Charles Dodgson (1722-1795), who was nominated Bishop of Ossory 250 years ago in succession to Richard Pococke. He was consecrated in Saint Werburgh’s Church, Dublin, on 11 August 1765 by William Carmichael, Archbishop of Dublin.

Ten years later, he moved from Kilkenny when he became Bishop of Elphin on 12 April 1775. King George III congratulated him on this promotion, saying that he ought indeed to be thankful to have got away from a palace where the stabling was so bad. He died in Dublin on 21 January 1795 and was buried at Saint Bride’s Church.

Lewis Carroll’s father, the Ven Charles Dodgson (1800-1861), was a Vicar in Cheshire and Yorkshire before becoming Archdeacon of Richmond. In the great theological debates in the 19th century, Archdeacon Dodgson was a High Church Anglican, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism. He was a college friend of Edward Bouverie Pusey, and an admirer of John Henry Newman. A supporter of the Oxford Movement and the Tractarians, he contributed the volume on Tertullian to Pusey’s series, Library of the Fathers, and in all wrote 24 books on theology.

His son, Charles Dodgson, was regarded as ‘stiffly conservative’ in his theological views at Oxford, his diary is interspersed with private prayers, and when asked about his beliefs in 1897 said he was a member of the Church of England, adding: ‘I owe all to him who loved me, and died on the Cross of Calvary.’

As a Fellow of Christ Church, Oxford, he was ordained a deacon on 22 December 1861. But a year later, when the time came to be ordained priest, he appealed to the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell (1811-1898) for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules and Dodgson faced expulsion. However, Liddell changed his mind overnight and allowed Dodgson to remain without becoming a priest.

Why did Dodgson decide against ordination to the priesthood? Some suggestions say his speech impediment explains his reluctance, as he had a difficulty in reading lessons and prayers and in preaching in his own words.

Certainly, Dodgson remained active in ministry: he preached regularly and was a friend and admirer of the theologian FD Maurice.

Whatever the reason, his stammer, which was so marked that he often stumbled over his own name, was an inspiration for the Do-Do in Alice, and Alice herself was Liddell’s own daughter, Alice Liddell (1852-1934).

The Comerford family of Summerville, Cork, were ancestors of Agnes Hull … did she replace Alice Liddell in Lews Carroll’s affections?

The distant – I ought to be honest, very distant – link between Lewis Carroll and the descendants of the Comerford family come through the descendants of the Revd Patrick Comerford Law (1797-1869), of Summerville, Co Cork, and Ballyalley, Killaloe, Co Clare. He was the grandson of Patrick Comerford, a wine merchant, of George’s Quay, Cork, and Summerville, Co Cork, who died in 1796.

Patrick Comerford Law was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA, 1818), and first practised at the Irish Bar. He was ordained deacon 1828, priest 1829, and was an army chaplain in Birr, King’s County (Offaly), Rector of Samlesbury, Lancashire (1829), Rector of North Repps, Norfolk (1830-1869), Rural Dean (1842), and a chaplain to the Marquis of Cholmondeley.

Patrick Comerford Law married Frances Arbuthnot, daughter of Bishop Alexander Arbuthnot of Killaloe, at Balbriggan, Co Dublin, on 17 October 1828. Patrick died at North Repps Rectory, Norfolk, on 15 April 1869. His daughter Frances (‘Fanny’) Amelia Law (1833-1883) was born at North Repps Rectory on 1 April 1833. She married Henry Charles Hull (1833-1902), a barrister, in 1862. They were the parents of four daughters, including Agnes Georgina Hull (1868-1936), who had a special friendship with the Revd Charles L Dodgson.

He got to know the Hull family while they were living in Eastbourne in 1877, and regularly took the four girls, Alice, Agnes, Evelin and Jessie, to the theatre, exhibitions, regattas and fireworks, constantly bought them presents, took them on walks and often stayed over in the Hull family home in London.

In all, Lewis Carroll wrote 31 letters to Agnes Hull, and also gave an older sister, Alice Hull, a copy of his book Doublets: A Word Puzzle. The letters portray a curious relationship where Carroll is ‘teasing, whimsical, wry, affectionate and at the same time deeply sensitive,’ according to Christie’s, who sold the letters in 1991. The letters include riddles, word games and conundrums that would delight a child. Some were addressed to her sisters, Evelin and Jessie, whom he described as ‘delicious.’

After six years of correspondence, Carroll’s letters suddenly stopped as strains developed in his friendship with the girls and their family. The letters’ intimacy was probably charming to a child of 10, but alarming to a girl of 17.

Carroll wrote the letters from Oxford or Guildford, during the winter when he could only meet Agnes occasionally in London. They would start with ‘My darling Agnes’ or simply ‘My darling.’

In one letter he wrote: ‘I love my love with an A, because she is Affectionate: I hate her with an A, because she is Artful ... Her name is Agnes.’

He was 50 when wrote a straightforward letter to Agnes without puns and riddles that appears to recognise their age difference. In it, he thanked her for writing to him. ‘It is pleasant even to find one is not forgotten when one is getting old, and grey, and stupid: but to be lovingly remembered is very charming,’ he wrote.

He always feared Agnes would grow distant with time and this became true in 1883 when the correspondence stopped. An agonising journal entry at Eastbourne on 22 August 1882 shows Carroll had reluctantly come to the conclusion that the four Hulls … do not in the least care for my company, or for me … Such friends are hardly worth having.’

In addition to a letter in mirror writing, the lot sold by Christie’s included an autographed first edition of The Hunting of The Snark dedicated to ‘Agnes Georgina Hull from the Author Sep. 11. 1877.’

Was Agnes Hull a substitute or replacement for the attention and affection Lewis Carroll once gave to Alice Liddell in Oxford 10 or more years previously? I can only suggest that it all gets ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’

A plaque at the Folly restaurant in Oxford commemorates the boat trip when Lewis Carroll first told the Alice stories to Alice Liddell (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Lewis Carroll, creator of a Wonderland: hidden antisemitism or secret commentary on the Talmud?

Alice drawing back the curtain on Oxford … is there an antisemitic thread in Lewis Carroll’s writings?

Patrick Comerford

I am musing over these few days about Alice in Wonderland and how the Alice stories began on a boat trip in Oxford on 4 July 1862, when Lewis Carroll first told the ‘Alice’ stories to Alice Liddell and her two sisters.

Alice’s Day is an annual city-wide celebration in Oxford on the first Saturday in July of all things about Alice in Wonderland, and this year it takes place tomorrow (6 July). It commemorates the afternoon of 4 July 1862, when the Christ Church don and mathematician Charles Dodgson took 10-year-old Alice and her sisters Edith (then 8) and Lorina (13), daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, on a boat trip from Folly Bridge to Godstow, where they had a picnic.

Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of the Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. His books have been translated into 70 languages and are still among their best-selling children’s books. They have influenced a great variety of artists and writers, and Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951) remains a cult classic.

What Alice Found There (1871) includes several celebrated poems such as ‘Jabberwocky’, ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ and ‘The Hunting of the Snark.’

Lewis Carroll was a polymath and was a pioneering photographer and portraitist in the early field of photography. He created several games, including a forerunner of Scrabble. He was also an accomplished mathematician and logician credited with establishing much of the foundation for modern logic, number theory and cryptography. Many of his invented words are now part of everyday conversation and many of his expressions have become common catchphrases, including ‘down the rabbit hole’, ‘curiouser and curiouser’, and ‘off with their heads’.

Carroll was an ordained deacon in the Church of England and remained a faithful Anglican throughout his life. But in recent years many writers and researchers have examined his writings more critically and claim that Carroll exhibits unambiguous antisemitism.

He characterised Jews as, among other things, ‘sarcastic’, ‘either hunchbacked or misers’, ‘obsequious unless very young’, ‘squinting’, ‘dishonest’, ‘look like goats’, ‘have beards a yard long’, and, of course, ‘have hooked noses’.

In his use of syllogisms and establishing logical premises, Carroll frequently used phrases such as ‘All Juwes [sic] are greedy.’ In his Symbolic Logic (1897), he used such propositions as ‘No Gentiles have hooked noses’, ‘No Jew is ever a bad hand at a bargain’, ‘There are no Jews in the house’, ‘No Gentiles have beards a yard long’, and – that frequent antisemitic allegation – ‘No Jews are honest.’ His other phrases include ‘No Gentiles say “shpoonj”,’ ‘No Jew is ignorant of Hebrew,’ ‘Some Jews are rich’.

Recent editions of Symbolic Logic retain these phrases, but include prominent disclaimers that the vile language was not deleted in the interests of retaining the historical accuracy of the original work.

Carroll saw Judaism as a religion of whiners and complainers entirely devoid of spirituality. For example, in Chapter 19 of his Sylvie and Bruno, Dr Arthur Forester, a character Carroll portrays as a highly intelligent and ethical character, depicts the Jews as mentally undeveloped. This is evidenced by a blind and faithful adherence to their Old Testament, in which ‘rewards and punishments are constantly appealed to as motives for action. That teaching is best for children, and the Israelites seem to have been, mentally, utter children.’

In Sylvie and Bruno, Carroll tells the story of a tailor – a stereotypical cliché for Jewish trades, although Carroll does not identify him as Jewish – who agrees to extend credit to a customer only if he agrees to pay double the outstanding debt each year.

In an essay ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ (1930), the economist John Maynard Keynes cites the attempt by Carroll’s tailor to secure specious and illusory future gain as a metaphor for his proposition regarding the irrationality of postponing personal gratification, and observes that Carroll almost certainly intended the tailor to be Jewish.

In a diary entry in 1885, Lewis Carroll comments on a children’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. He writes: ‘It was a very charming performance, and some of them have lovely voices, specially Elsie Joel who acted Mabel: she looks Jewish.’ It is as though Carroll is saying she was a surprisingly good actress, even though she is Jewish. Other reviewers admired Elsie’s performance without mentioning her Jewish appearance.

On the other hand, in correspondence on 18 August 1884, Carroll wrote: ‘One hospital manager wrote that he knew a place where there were a number of sick children, but he was afraid I wouldn’t like to give them any books – and why, do you think? ‘Because they are Jews!’ I wrote to say [that] of course I would give them some! Why in the world shouldn’t little Israelites read Alice’s Adventures as well as other children?

Perhaps on that occasion Carroll’s love of children trumped his contempt for Jews. He had already characterised Jews as ‘obsequious unless very young’, suggesting his animus towards Jews did not extend to Jewish children.

Carroll delighted in puzzles, metaphors, wordplay, and invented words – consider ‘Jabberwocky’, for example. There are many theories about the cryptic allegorical meanings of the Alice stories. Freudians, for their part, suggest his books represent an outlet for his repressed desires.

Some writers see Alice as a secret history of religious controversies in Victorian England, others as a metaphor for the monstrous mindlessness of the universe. Martin Gardner argues in The Annotated Alice, the entirety of Through the Looking Glass is a chess game ‘in which living pieces are ignorant of the game’s plan and cannot tell if they move under their own will or by invisible fingers.’ Indeed, Alice is the only mature and rational character in Wonderland. ‘We are all mad here’, says the Cheshire Cat.

One of the most intriguing, if not bizarre, hypotheses I have come across in recent weeks is by Dr Abraham Ettelson (1897-1971), an American Hasidic Jew and brain surgeon who fought in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

In a self-published 80-page small book, Through the Looking-Glass Decoded (1966), Ettelson argues that Alice is actually a cryptogram of the Talmud written in code. He notes the frequency and importance of mirrors and inversion in the Alice stories and concludes that Through the Looking Glass and the Talmud are mirror images of each other.

He argues that the principal subtext of Alice and Looking Glass is ‘the Jewish way’ and sees the books as Carroll’s use of a Midrashic approach that employs layered interpretations and ethical analysis to expound on the pshat or the primary meaning of the text.

Ettelson believes Jabberwocky is a code name for the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement. He divides the word ‘Jabberwocky’ into two halves and then reads each part in a mirror; the result is ‘Rebbaj Yckow,’ or Rabbi Jacob. This gamesmanship echoes Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s construction of his own pseudonym: he formed the name by translating his first and middle names, Charles Lutwidge, into Latin, which became Carolus Ludovicus; reversed their order; and translated the name back into English as Lewis Carroll.

The first stanza of ‘Jabberwocky’ is:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Ettelson suggests these opening lines contain no less than half of all the Hebrew letters. One of Carroll’s nonsense words in ‘Jabberwocky is frumious, which Ettelson reads as a fusion of the words frum, a Yiddish word for a devout Jew, and pious. In another instance, the ferocious jaw-snapping Bandersnatch contains an anagram for Satan.

The ball of worsted wool that Alice’s kitten plays with symbolises the woollen tzitzit, which is not a far-fetched suggestion, for worsted wool is a twisted woollen thread and a tzizit is a tassel of twisted cord. Moreover, Carroll says Alice’s kitten ‘curled up in a corner.’ For Ettelson, this evokes the ‘four corners’ on which tzitzit are worn.

Most commentators dismiss the ‘Talmud theory’ as, at best, sheer fantasy. Yet they agree Ettelson’s methodology and analytical framework favourably compare with Carroll’s own logomania.

The illustrator Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), who provided 92 illustrations for the Alice books, was the principal political cartoonist for Punch. His portrayal of Jews included the usual antisemitic features such as a hooked nose and dark, oily hair. In particular, he frequently lampooned Benjamin Disraeli as Fagin, the Jewish leader of a crew of child pickpockets and robbers in Dickens’s Oliver Twist. In one drawing, he has Disraeli instructing his fellow politicians how to effectively pick the pockets of the public.

A cartoon by Tenniel in Punch on 9 August 1890 depicts Tsar Alexander III – a staunch antisemite who accused the Jews of the murder of Alexander II and launched pogroms against them – with his boot on the neck of a feeble and helpless bearded Jew and about to wield his sword of persecution. However, the ‘Ghost of Pharoah’ appears behind him and, speaking from bitter experience, warns ‘Forbear! That weapon [of persecution against the Jews] always wounds the hand that wields it.’

In this classic example of antisemitism, Tenniel is claiming the Jews wield a secret power that they use against those who would abuse them. In later drawings, he claims the Jews of Russia appear weak but are actually rich and powerful and use their secret cabal against poor Russian citizens.

Yet, when a number of prominent Oxford graduates joined in sending a memorial of solidarity to British Chief Rabbi Nathan Adler expressing sorrow and amazement regarding the Russian persecution of Jews, Lewis Carroll was one of the 245 signatories.

Carroll’s statements about Jews remain unexplained. No excuses should ever be made for his statements about Jews. They may well have been within the parameters of Victorian British behaviour, like the rest of his idiosyncrasies. Yet Alice in Wonderland is such a remarkable book and a lasting classic, its readers should wish the author was capable of transcending the common prejudices of his day.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Could Jabberwocky is a code name for the Baal Shem Tov?