The sculptures of Thessaloniki: 11, ‘Monument of Sokratis Karantinos’ at the Royal Theatre of Thessaloniki

The marble monument at the Royal Theatre of Thessaloniki honours Sokratis Karantinos (1906-1979), the first artistic director of the State Theatre of Northern Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have been recalling in recent weeks how I have come across a collection of photographs of a dozen modern sculptures in the streets and parks of Thessaloniki and how I realised I had written little about these sculptures over the years.

Rather than leave these photographs and memories in forgotten files on my laptop or in the cloud, I started an occasional series of blog postings on some of those modern sculptures I have rediscovered in Thessaloniki. Over these few weeks, I am inviting you to join me in a minor odyssey of recovery and discovery as my mind wanders through the streets of Thessaloniki, looking at these sculptures again.

The sculptures I have looked at in recent weeks include the monumental statues of Aristotle, Alexander the Great and Eleftherios Venizelos, the Jewish Memorial by Konstantinos Lentaris at the Aristotele University of Thessaloniki, the bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis in front of the White Tower, the Monument for the Jewish Holocaust on the edge of Eleftherias Square, ‘The Woman of Pindos’ by Kostas Domboulas in Fanarioton Square, ‘The Stumbling Stones’ or ‘Stolpersteine’ by Gunter Demnig, and the ‘Marathon Runner of Peace’ or ‘Monument of Peace’ commemorating the peace activist Grigoris Lambrakis (1912-1963), at the junction of Ermou street, Eleftherios Venizelou street and Spandoni street.

A marble monument by an unknown sculptor at the Royal Theatre of Thessaloniki honours Sokratis Karantinos (1906-1979), the first artistic director of the State Theatre of Northern Greece and a prominent theatre director and critic. He was involved with the foundation and the early years of the National Theatre of Northern Greece (NTNG), and was its first artistic director (1961-1967).

The inscriptions on the sculpture include a dedication to Sokratis Karantinos and a verse from the poet George Seferis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The monument was erected on 30 October Avenue by the Municipality of Thessaloniki in 1989. The pedimented upper part of the monument is in the style of a relief marble funerary stele, with a relief carving of a theatre stage in the middle.

The inscriptions on the sculpture include a dedication to Sokratis Karantinos and a poignant verse by the Nobel Prize winning poet George Seferis:

Θυμότανε κανείς γέροντες δασκάλους που μας άφησαν ορφανούς
One remembered old teachers who left us orphaned

This haunting quotation is from the closing stanza of ‘The Last Day’, a powerful poem written by Seferis in Athens in February 1939. The line expresses a profound sense of spiritual and cultural abandonment. For Seferis, the ‘old teachers’ (or elders/spiritual leaders) represent the guiding authority of tradition, wisdom, and moral stability. By leaving the younger generation ‘orphaned’ they left them without direction in a broken world.

The poem was written on the brink of World War II and during the oppressive Metaxas dictatorship and captures a pervasive sense of powerlessness, impending doom, and total annihilation. The line highlights a deep disappointment with the previous generation, whose cowardice, political missteps, or silence left ordinary people completely vulnerable to the oncoming historical catastrophe.

In the context of Greek theatre history, Karantinos was universally revered by generations of actors and colleagues as a δάσκαλος (dáskalos), a master or teacher. The choice of this specific line highlights the profound sense of loss felt in the theatrical community in Greece when Karantinos died in 1979.

Sokratis Karantinos (Σωκράτης Καραντινός) was a theatre director, theatre critic, drama teacher and actor. He was born in Athens, the son of the owner of the Olympia Theatre and theatrical entrepreneur Nikolaos Karantinos, and a brother of the architect Patroklos Karantinos (1903-1976). He was raised in Athens and spent part of his childhood in Constantinople (Istanbul). After studying in Germany, France and Austria, he returned to Greece in 1933 and became the director the New Drama School. At the time, he also worked as a journalist and theatre critic.

During and after World War II, Karantinos worked with the Athens Theatre, the National Theatre, the Attica Stage and the Greek National Opera. He then became director of the Theatre School of the Athenaion educational association, professor at the University of Athens, first artistic director of the National Theatre of Northern Greece in Thessaloniki (1961) and director of the Drama School of the National Theatre.

As a theatre director of the NTNG, he staged more than 15 theatrical productions. He became artistic advisor and director at the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOC) in 1972 and remained there until 1974.

He died in Athens on 2 June 1979.

The name of 30 October Avenue (Λεωφόρος 30ης Οκτωβρίου, Leoforos 30is Oktovriou) recalls 30 October 1944, when the city was liberated from occupying German forces. The Royal Theatre of Thessaloniki (Βασιλικό Θέατρο Θεσσαλονίκης) on 30 October Avenue is the main winter stage for the National Theatre of Northern Greece. It is located at 2, 30 October Avenue in White Tower Square in Thessaloniki and has seating for 721.

The Royal Theatre continues to be the main stage of the Theatre and remains one of the main pillars of Thessaloniki’s cultural life. As well as theatrical performances, the theatre also hosts concerts, festivals and other cultural events, keeping the cultural tradition of the city alive.

In the side streets of Thessaloniki after night falls (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In this series:

1, Introduction (21 September 2026)

2, Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis, Aristotelous Square (22 September 2026)

3, Alexander the Great by Evangelos Moustakas, Alexander’s Garden (23 September 2026)

4, Eleftherios Venizelos by Giannis Pappas, Plateia Dikastirion (24 September 2026)

5, The Jewish Monument by Konstantinos Lentaris, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (25 September 2026)

6, Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis, in front of the White Tower (1 October 2026)

7, The Monument of the Jewish Holocaust by Nandor Glid, Eleftherias Square (2 October 2026)

8, ‘The Woman of Pindos’ by Kostas Domboulas, Fanarioton Square (8 October 2026)

9, ‘The Stumbling Stones’ (‘Stolpersteine’) by Gunter Demnig (9 October 2026)

10, ‘Marathon Runner of Peace’, the monument to Grigoris Lambrakis by Vasilis Doropoulos, Ermou Street (14 October 2026)

11, The Monument of Sokratis Karantinos, 30 October Avenue (22 October 2026)

Next: Citizens’ by Manolis Tzompanakis, Aghias Sophias Square

Saint Mary Woolnoth: a return visit to a London church linked to John Newton and celebrated by TS Eliot

The Church of Saint Mary Woolnoth has links with TS Eliot, John Newton and a branch of the Comerford family in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The Stony Stratford Playreaders have been reading TS Eliot’s play The Cocktail Party this week. I suggested this play for many reasons, including its associations with Mary Trevelyan from Stony Stratford, who inspired Julia, one of the play’s characters, its place in the poetry of TS Eliot and discussions of his Anglo-Catholic spirituality, and because of my own long-running interest in the poetry and writings of TS Eliot.

When I was in London recently, I visited Change Alley, which had associations with four generations of one branch of the Comerford, sought out the sites of the earliest coffee shops in London, and that same afternoon I also returned to visit Saint Mary Woolnoth Church, a landmark church near Bank underground station at the heart of the City of London, on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street.

Members of the Comerford family who are associated with Saint Mary Woolnoth Church include: James Comerford (1764-1833), who was buried at Saint Mary Woolnoth in 1833; and his grandson James William Comerford (1829-1917), who was baptised in Saint Mary Woolnoth on 19 January 1830.

The church is interesting as one of the Queen Anne Churches designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, but also for its associations with many interesting people, including the founder of Lloyds Edward Lloyd, the abolitionist and hymnwriter John Newton and his friend William Wilberforce, and, of course, the poet TS Eliot.

Inside Saint Mary Woolnoth Church … the third church on the site and designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The church stands on a site has been used for worship for perhaps 2,000 years. Traces of Roman and pagan religious buildings were found under the foundations of the church, along with the remains of an Anglo-Saxon wooden structure.

The full and unusual dedication of the church is to Saint Mary of the Nativity. The name ‘Woolnoth’ may refer to a benefactor, possibly Wulnoth de Walebrok, a Saxon noble who lived in the area earlier in the 12th century. Alternatively, the name may be connected with the wool trade – this was so with the nearby church of Saint Mary Woolchurch Haw.

The present church is at least the third church on the site. The Norman church survived until the mid-15th century, when it was rebuilt. The new building was consecrated in 1438, but additional work appears to have taken place towards the end of the century, and a spire was added in 1485.

The advowson was given by the founder or his heirs to the Priory of Saint Helen, Bishopsgate. After the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII gave it to Sir Martin Bowes of Lombard Street, a goldsmith and Lord Mayor of London in 1545-1546. The advowson passed from Bowes to the Goldsmiths’ Company, and the patronage subsequently passed through various hands.

The church was badly damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but was partially rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in 1670-1675. Sir Robert Vyner, Lord Mayor of London in 1674, made a major contribution to the costs, and Vyner had his own entrance to the east end of the church, a privilege inherited by the Post Office which later stood on the site of his mansion in Lombard Street.

The style of the church was described as ‘modern Gothick’ in 1708. But Saint Mary Woolnoth was only partially-repaired by Wren. The building became unsafe and in 1711 it was decided to build a new church under the Fifty New Churches Act. By 1712, the church was so dilapidated that the parishioners were afraid to worship there, and repairs were carried out.

Despite its small size, the Church of Saint Mary Woolnoth is surprisingly spacious inside (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Edward Lloyd, the founder of Lloyd’s of London, was a member of the vestry at the time. He founded Lloyd’s coffee house, which later developed into Lloyd’s Corporation. TS Eliot would work for Lloyd’s two centuries later.

Work on rebuilding the church began in 1716, when excavations uncovered remains thought to be Roman, and there is evidence of major Roman buildings in the immediate vicinity. The new church opened for worship on Easter Day 1727. It was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, assisted by John James. It is one of Hawksmoor’s most distinctive and original designs and his only church in the City of London.

Hawksmoor designed an unusually imposing façade in the English baroque style. It is dominated by two flat-topped turrets supported by Corinthian columns. The west side of the façade, facing Lombard Street, has distinctive recesses bearing an inset forward-curving pediment resting on skewed columns.

Hawksmoor’s treatment of the north elevation has been described by as ‘a piece of sheer architectural eloquence hard to match’. The absence of windows on this wall insulates the interior from the noise of Lombard Street.

The wooden baldacchino, with twisted columns and a canopy ornamented with gilded cherubs, was made by John Meard and carved by Gabriel Appleby (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Despite its small size, the church is surprisingly spacious inside. The layout is typical of Hawksmoor, forming a ‘cube within a cube,’ or a square enclosed by three rows of four columns that is itself enclosed by a wider square.

In the shallow chancel, an ornate, baroque wooden baldacchino with twisted columns and a canopy ornamented with gilded cherubs, was made by John Meard and carved by Gabriel Appleby. It was modelled on Bernini’s baldacchino in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The pulpit, with its unusual bulging shape, was made by Thomas Darby and Gervaise Smith and is inlaid with sunbursts by Appleby. The tester echoes the shape of the ceiling. The galleries were made by Meard and carved by Darby and Smith.

A plaque recalling John Newton bears the epitaph he wrote for himself (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Revd John Newton (1725-1807), the former slave trader who became an abolitionist, and an evangelical hymn writer, was the Rector of Saint Mary’s Woolnoth from 1780 to 1807. His best-known hymn is Amazing Grace, and his parishioners included the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce (1759-1833).

John Newton died in December 1807, shortly after the Abolition Act was passed. He was buried beside his wife in the crypt of Saint Mary Woolnoth. A memorial tablet on the north wall bears an epitaph written by Newton himself.

The church was threatened with demolition on several occasions but was saved each time. Its galleries were removed in 1875-1876by William Butterfield, who thought they were unsafe, a number of significant changes were made to the interior, and the chancel was raised.

The pulpit, with its unusual bulging shape, was made by Thomas Darby and Gervaise Smith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Between 1897 and 1900, the City & South London Railway (C&SLR) built Bank Underground station beneath the church. The company had permission to demolish the church, but public outcry forced the company to think again.

The crypt was sold to the railway and the bodies there were moved for reburial at Ilford, including Edward Lloyd and James Comerford. However, John Newton and his wife Mary (Catlett) were reburied in 1893 at Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney, near Milton Keynes, where he had been a curate and then vicar before moving to London.

The crypt and plinth of the church were used as a booking hall in 1897-1900. The walls and internal columns of the church were then supported on steel girders while the lift shafts and staircase shaft for Bank station were built directly beneath the church floor. At the same time, the bells were rehung with new fittings.

The lower part of the south elevation is now masked by the single-storey former Underground station entrance, with a new vestry, in a style that pays tribute to Hawksmoor.

A second organ, dated 1913, is placed at the east end of the north aisle.

The altar piece in Saint Mary Woolnoth, with the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

TS Eliot, who worked in the City nearby at Lloyd’s Bank, refers to this church in 1922 in a passage in his poem The Waste Land, Part 1, ‘The Burial of the Dead’:

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, “Stetson!
“You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
“Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
“Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
“Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
“You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”

In his notes to the poem, Eliot remarks that the ‘dead sound on the final stroke of nine’ was a ‘phenomenon which I have often noticed.’ Spurr interprets this as a symbolic allusion to the traditional hour of execution and Christ’s crucifixion at the ninth hour.

In The Waste Land, Eliot also refers to Saint Magnus Martyr, and celebrates the architecture and spiritual importance of the church, with its ‘inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.’

Inside Saint Mary Woolnoth Church, facing the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Mary Woolnoth was the parish church of the Lords Mayor of London. The Mansion House stands almost opposite, on the site of Saint Mary Woolchurch Haw. This association helped protect the church from repeated threats of demolition between 1863 and 1926.

Eliot supported the protests in 1926 to save City churches like Saint Mary Woolnoth from demolition. He wrote that the threatened churches gave ‘to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced … the least precious redeems some vulgar street …

‘The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten.’

In Anglo-Catholic in Religion: TS Eliot and Christianity, Professor Barry Spurr examines how Eliots references to Saint Mary Woolnoth in The Waste Land foreshadow his later Anglo-Catholic faith. Eliot was baptised on 29 June 1927 at Holy Trinity Church in Finstock, Oxfordshire, by the Revd William Force Stead. He was confirmed the next day, 30 June 1927, in the private chapel of Bishop Thomas Banks Strong of Oxford.

Saint Mary Woolnoth was the only City church to survive World War II unscathed. The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950, and it became a guild church in 1952.

Until recently Saint Mary Woolnoth was used by the German-speaking Swiss community in London. It now hosts ‘IMPRINT Church London’, which includes Saint Mary Woolnoth, Saint Edmund the King and Saint Clement Eastcheap in the Diocese of London, and is part of the HTB Network of churches. The Revd Wole Agbaje is the priest in charge.

• Saint Mary Woolnoth is open Monday-Friday from 7 am to 3 pm and also has a café, Newton’s Coffee, on the front steps.

‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?’ … the east end of Saint Mary Woolnoth at Post Office Court (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Reading ‘The Cocktail Party’ by TS Eliot with the Stony Stratford Playreaders

The TS Eliot Theatre at Merton College, Oxford … the Stony Stratford Playreaders have been reading TS Eliot’s play ‘The Cocktail Party’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I have been part of the Stony Stratford Playreaders group for about two years now, and we are now rehearsing our contributions to the Stony Words Festival next January.

Last night, on my suggestion, we also read The Cocktail Party, a three-act verse drama written by TS Eliot in 1948 that focuses on the themes of modern existence, identity and spiritual yearning, told through intricate dialogue and drama.

The Cocktail Party tells of a troubled married couple who, through the intervention of a mysterious stranger, settle their problems and move on with their lives. The play was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949 and first published in 1950. It was the most popular of Eliot’s seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.

The Cocktail Party was written while Eliot was a visiting scholar in Princeto, where he received word that he had reveived that year’s Nobel Prize for literature. The play went on to have successful runs in theatres in London and New York in 1950, with the Broadway production receiving the 1950 Tony Award for Best Play.

At its debut in Edinburgh: critics acclaimed the play as ‘the most advanced and original point yet reached in Mr Eliot’s dramatic writing.’ Reviewers delighted in the subtlety of Eliot’s verse, and the ‘spirit of early Shaw’ which elicited a ‘high-pitched intellectual giggle … frequently drowned by the full-throated roar’. Some reviewers, however, found the play ‘insufficiently poetic’ and ‘perhaps the weakest poetry that Eliot has yet written.’

The Cocktail Party draws on the play Alcestis by Euripides and the Orpheus and Eurydice legend, and it has been described as ‘a play on two planes’: the level of the divine, and a drawing-room comedy.

The characters are: Edward Chamberlayne, Lavinia Chamberlayne, Celia Coplestone, with whom Edward has had an affair, Peter Quilpe, who yearns for Celia, Julia Shuttlethwaite, Alexander MacColgie Gibbs, an Unidentified Guest, later identified as Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly, a Nurse-Secretary, who is secretary to Sir Henry, and two caterer’s men.

The characters Reilly, Julia, and Alexender are not, in fact, humans but angelic beings dedicated to the transhumanisation of the human soul. Two paths lie open to humans: the first is the way of companionable self-deception (‘the hearth’) embraced by the vast majority – as epitomised in the relationship between Edward and Lavinia; and the second is that of the saint, embraced by a few.

The Faber and Faber office at 24 Russell Square in Bloomsbury, where TS Eliot was working when he was writing ‘The Cocktail Pary’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The drama of the first act revolves around Edward Chamberlayne, who is hosting a cocktail party, all the while disguising the fact that his wife Lavinia has left him.

In the course of the play a mysterious guest, originally played by Alec Guinness, turns out to be a Harley Street psychologist, Sir Henry Harcourt-Reilly. He returns Lavinia to Edward, and teaches the two that their lives are better together, though superficial.

Simultaneous to the main drama of the play is the story of Edward’s mistress, Celia, who has been described as ‘Eliot’s most moving character’. She journeys beyond the drawing room and leaves to become a missionary in the East. At a second cocktail party, two years later, it is revealed that she died horribly, crucified in the service of God and eaten by ants on a cross in a far-off land.

Eliot may have based the character of Julia on a woman who was born in Stony Stratford and who helped Eliot when he was writing the play. Mary Trevelyan (1897-1983), who was born in Stony Stratford, was the eldest of six children of the Revd George Philip Trevelyan (1858-1937), Vicar of Saint Mary’s, Wolverton (1885-1897).

They had first met in Swanwick, Derbyshire, at a conference of the Student Christian Movement (SCM). She helped Eliot to transcribe the song ‘One-eyed Reilly’, a song he had heard in his youth. Eliot sometimes referred to Mary as Jullia, and it is said he modelled the character Julia in The Cocktail Party on her.

The name of Celia Coplestone seems to be Eliot’s homage to Father Frederick Coplestone (1907-1994), the Jesuit philosopher who had recently referred to Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in a celebrated BBC broadcast debate with Bertrand Russell on the existence of God. Celia’s choice of a missionary life may be an oblique reference to Copleston’s two uncles who were SPG-supported Anglican missionaries: Reginald Stephen Copleston, who was Bishop of Calcutta and Ernest Copleston, was Bishop of Colombo.

Celia’s choice of missionary destination, Kinkanja, may also refer to Mary Trevelyan’s work in North Borneo (today’s Sabah), with a terrifying description of the indigenous culture that was still circulating at the time in England.

In The Cocktail Party, Eliot reconciles the drawing room and divinity, bringing the play its most praise, with one review describing Eliot as both ‘a literary craftsman and a moral prophet.’

There is a sense too in which Eliot seems to have used the play to exorcise his own personal demons, including his own questioning of his ability and recognition as a poet. The way Edward and Lavinia sett;e for a passionless coexistence, their marital spats and Edward’s guilty remorse echo Eliot’s anguished relationship with his wife Vivienne, who had died in 1947. In addition to exploring his private hell, Eliot suggests that the only alternative to the bleak materialism of the post-war world is some form of ecstatic sacrifice.

I was intrigued many years ago by the way a production of the play was part of the assessment of a module at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and thought at one time (albeit momentarily) of borrowing the idea in one module I taught at the Church of Ireland Theological College.

Barry Spurr, in Anglo-Catholic in Religion: TS Eliot and Christianity, recalls that when an Episcopalian priest suggested to Eliot that The Cocktail Party was ‘covertly all about the Mass, Eliot responded: ‘I really wanted to write a damn good play, and I hope I did.’

One critic summarised the play succinctly: ‘know yourself; choose, come to terms with your insignificance, or, if you happen to be one of the saintly few, face the full consequences of your choice.’

‘The best of a bad job is all any of us make of it’, Sir Henry says in his final lines, ‘Except of course, the saints.’

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 160, Thursday 15 October 2026

‘Therefore also the Wisdom of God said …’ (Luke 11: 48) … Holy Wisdom as the mother of Faith, Hope and Love, seen in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIX, 11 October 2026). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Teacher of the Faith.

I am going to a funeral this afternoon. Later in the evening, I am involved with an amateur dramatic and play reading group in Stony Stratford, and we are reading The Cocktail Party by TS Eliot. In the meantime, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading 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.

‘Therefore also the Wisdom of God said …’ (Luke 11: 48) … limited visiting hours at the Cave of the Wisdom of God near the village of Topoli in western Crete … but where do we find wisdom? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 47-54 (NRSVA):

47[Jesus said to the lawyer,] 47 ‘Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed. 48 So you are witnesses and approve of the deeds of your ancestors; for they killed them, and you build their tombs. 49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, “I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute”, 50 so that this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be charged against this generation. 52 Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.’

53 When he went outside, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be very hostile towards him and to cross-examine him about many things, 54 lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.

‘Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your ancestors killed’ (Luke 11: 47) … Lycian rock tombs hewn into the hillsides near Fethiye in south-west Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In this morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Luke 11: 47-54), Jesus continues his debate with the lawyers and the Pharisees, using hyperbole as he challenges one of the lawyers that their attitudes are the sort of attitudes that led to the murder of the prophets in the past, and telling them they have ‘taken away the key of knowledge.’

Where do we find the Wisdom of God and ‘the key of knowledge’?

The multi-layered descriptions of Christ in the ‘O Antiphons’ sung during Advent include the ‘Key of David’, and there it is said it is he ‘who opens and no one can shut, who shuts and no one can open’ (c.f. Isaiah 22: 22; 42: 7; Jeremiah 51: 19; Revelation 3: 7).

Isaiah prophesied: ‘I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open’ (Isaiah 22: 22). ‘His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore’ (Isaiah 9: 7).

He is ‘to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house’ (Isaiah 42: 7).

As for Wisdom, the Psalmist reminds us that God ‘provides food for those who fear him,’ and that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (see Psalm 111: 5, 10). But the purpose of wisdom, which Solomon asks for alone, is so that good and evil can be distinguished, especially when it comes to the needs of the people.

Solomon asks not for a long life or riches, or the lives of his enemies, but for the gift of wisdom or an ‘understanding mind.’ God grants this request, and then adds on riches and honours, and also promises long life if Solomon follows God’s ways.

In the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom is presented personified as Lady Wisdom, who invites the unwise or ‘simple’ to her banquet (see Proverbs 9: 1-6).

In popular Greek iconography, Wisdom is often depicted as the mother of Faith, Hope and Love.

Some years ago, I stayed in Saint Matthew’s Vicarage in Westminster, where Bishop Frank Weston (1871-1924) is said to have written a key, influential speech. He held together in a creative combination his incarnational and sacramental theology with his radical social concerns, and these formed the keynote of his address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923. He believed that the sacramental focus gave a reality to Christ’s presence and power that nothing else could. ‘The one thing England needs to learn is that Christ is in and amid matter, God in flesh, God in sacrament.’

And so he concluded: ‘But I say to you, and I say it with all the earnestness that I have, if you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in His Blessed Sacrament, then, when you come out from before your tabernacles, you must walk with Christ, mystically present in you through the streets of this country, and find the same Christ in the peoples of your cities and villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums … It is folly – it is madness – to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.’

He declared: ‘Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.’

Excerpts from his address are pinned to the west door of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford.

Something similar was said in a letter in The Tablet some years ago [4 August 2018] by Derek P Reeve, a retired parish priest in Portsmouth: ‘The … Lord whom we receive at the Eucharist is the one whom we go out to serve, and, dare I say it, to adore in our neighbour …’

So sacramental life, and accepting Christ as the ‘Bread of Life’ are wonderful concepts in my faith and in my Christian discipleship. But they are meaningless unless I live this out in the way I try to care for those who are hungry, suffering and marginalised.

And that, for me is a very concise understanding of the wisdom of God and its impact on my life.

‘For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering’ (Luke 11: 52) … an old key in Dr Milley’s Hospital on Beacon Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 15 October 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, 11-17 October 2026 (pp 46-47), is ‘The Lord Has Done Great Things’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by Guilherme Moura Bejo, candidate for Holy Orders in the Anglican Diocese of São Paulo, and co-ordinator of the Diocesan Youth Group.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 15 October 2026) invites us to pray:

Almighty God, we pray for meaningful relationships and mutual support among participants on the Emerging Leaders Academy. May the friendships and mentorships formed over the course bear fruit in God’s mission.

The Collect of the Day:

Merciful God,
who by your Spirit raised up your servant Teresa of Avila
to reveal to your Church the way of perfection:
grant that her teaching
may awaken in us a longing for holiness,
until we attain to the perfect union of love
in Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Teresa to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering’ (Luke 11: 52) … the sign of the Old Cross Keys on Stony Stratford High Street (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

‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ in Stony Stratford rekindles memories of summers in rural Ireland

A poster for this month’s production of ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ by the Ballaghaderreen Players at the Hawk’s Well Theatre

Patrick Comerford

I have been a member of the Stony Stratford Playreaders’ group for almost two years now, and during that time we have met twice a month in the library on Church Street, alternating between well-known, established works and plays by group members. We were part of the Stony Words festival last year, and I’m looking forward to taking part in the programme being prepared for next January.

Last month, I was asked to read the part of Trygaeus in Peace by Aristophanes, a very appropriate choice in the present global climate.

This week, we were reading Dancing at Lughnasa, a play by the Irish writer Brian Friel (1929-2015), first produced in 1990 and set in in the fictional town of Ballybeg, based on Glenties in Co Donegal, in August 1936. The play is set at a time when the Spanish Civil War was breaking out and Italy was invading Ethiopia (then Abyssinia), while in domestic politics Eamon de Valera had been office since 1932, and was about to introduce a new constitution and become Taoiseach in 1937, all referred to by the characters in the play.

This is a memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator, as he recalls the summer in 1936, when he was a seven-year-old living with his mother Christina and four aunts, the five Mundy sisters – Maggie, Chris, Agnes, Rose, and Kate – and their brother Father Jack, who has returned from a life as a missionary in Uganda.

Lughnasa is the month of August. But, as the summer draws to a close, the family realises sadly that it is facing economic privation and their hopes fade as the realise the dismal futures they face.

Kate is a school teacher, the only sister with a well-paid job. Agnes and Rose help Maggie to keep house and knit gloves, but know this small income is about to dry up when a new knitwear factory opens nearby. Maggie and Chris have no income at all.

Their brother Father Jack is in his late 50s and a former British army chaplain in East Africa during World War I. He has come back home after 25 years as a missionary priest in Ryanga, a leper colony in a remote part of Uganda. He has malaria, and has trouble remembering many things, including his sisters’ names and everyday, common conversational words.

He no longer says Mass, and perhaps the real reasons he has been sent home are that he has ‘gone native’, abandoned much of his Catholic practice – there are hints that perhaps he has either lost his faith or that he was too close to his former ‘house boy’ Okawa.

He admires or respects the beliefs and practices of the native people of Africa. His apparent loss of faith greatly worries or Kate, who is concerned about the family's reputation. Jack refers to Michael as a love child rather than an illegitimate child and says they are common and accepted among the people of Uganda.

In a scene near the close of the play, Jack ceremonially swaps his British colonial feathered tricorn hat, a departing gift from a British governor, for a cap worn by Chris’s lover Gerry Evans, Michael’s Welsh father who is charming but unreliable. Gerry becomes the new, secular missionary, heading off to Barcelona to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

The play takes its name from the occasions when Chris and Gerry go walking and dance and the sisters’ random, spontaneous dancing prompted by intermittent céilí music from a temperamental radio nicknamed Marconi. Their lives are marked by poverty and financial insecurity, lives that are unfulfilled and lead to disaster off-stage.

We learn from Michael’s narrative that Agnes and Rose later die in abject poverty in Southwark in the 1950s, while Michael’s father has a parallel family in Wales, including a half-brother with the same name. For all of this, Michael was surrounded by love in his childhood, and this love is underlined by the way Jack refers to him as a love child rather than an illegitimate child, even though the play is peppered with word ‘bastard’.

Father Jack seems to recover from his malaria or his forgetfulness, but Michael as narrator tells us that he died later of a heart attack soon after the events in the play and he tells us that Kate was inconsolable when Jack died.

The play was originally staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1990. It moved to the National Theatre in London in 1991, and later to the Phoenix Theatre and the Garrick, before moving on to Broadway. It was revived in Dublin in 1999-2000, again at the Abbey Theatre, and Joe Dowling directed a new production of the play at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2004. The Old Vic Theatre in London presented a well-received production in 2009 starring Sorcha Cusack, Niamh Cusack, Sinéad Cusack and Andrea Corr.

In various productions, Father Jack has been played by Barry McGovern, Alec McCowen, Donal Donnelly, Des Cave, Michael Countryman, Michael Fitzpatrick, Ardal O’Hanlon and by Michael Gambon in the 1998 film adaptation starring Meryl Streep as Kate Mundy.

Being asked to read the part of Father Jack came as a pleasant surprise. He reminded me of many missionary priests I knew who had worked in Africa, Asia and Latin America and had become incarnational and enculturated in their approach to mission. Perhaps I also identified a little, too, with his problems in finding acceptance of his ministry in retirement. But I also thought of grandfather who had fought in World War I and who had been sent home from Thessaloniki with malaria.

I have only stayed in Co Donegal a half dozen or so times in all my life. But there are few differences from and many parallels between the rural life of the 1930s and the life I remember on my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin, Co Waterford, in the 1950s and 1960s: the food, the temperamental radio, the difficulties families had in eking out a level, a similar distance into the nearest village, the suspicions of people living in even more remote areas, the lakes and the mountains, families forced to find work in larger towns or cities or to leave and find a living in London, whispered conversations about politics, prejudice and bigotry, and families were sisters were strong and determined women whose hopes and aspirations were always going to be disappointed.

De Valera was still dominating the political landscape, there were memories of Republicans and Blueshirts who went away to join different side in the Spanish Civil War, there was a missionary uncle who never returned, an aunt who was a teacher and a nun, and the Keane family had tried to provide a local industry until the bacon factory closed in 1980.

The ‘Stage’ opposite the Cats provided the same céilí music the sisters listened to, there was a temperamental ‘Marconi’ that ran off a battery and that only picked up the BBC and not Radio Eireann. Prejudice and judgmentalism were still alive in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, and I remember overhearing whispered conversations about the Fethard-on-Sea Boycott in neighbouring Co Wexford.

Lughnasa has passed, we are a long way into September, and summer has turned to autumn. But summers and Augusts in rural Donegal in the 1930s and rural Waterford in the 1950s came alive for me in the library Stony Stratford on Thursday afternoon.

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 132, Thursday 17 September 2026

‘A woman … began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair’ (Luke 7: 37-38) … a detail in a window by Michael O’Connor & Sons in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 13 September 2026). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Hildegard (1179), Abbess of Bingen, Visionary. The calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church today commemorates Saint Sophia, whose name (Σοφία) means ‘wisdom’ in Greek, and her three daughters, Pistis, Elpis and Agape, or Πίστις (Faith), Ελπίδα (Hope) and Αγάπη (Love), martyrs in the second century.

I hope to be involved with a play-reading and drama group in Stony Stratford Library later this afternoon. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Peter Paul Rubens, ‘The Feast of Simon the Pharisee’

Luke 7: 36-50 (NRSVA)

36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.’ 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’ 41 ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ 43 Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ 44 Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ 48 Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ 50 And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

James Tissot, ‘The Ointment of the Magdalene’ (‘Le parfum de Madeleine’) … however, the woman in Simon’s house, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany and the woman caught in adultery are four different women (Photograph: Brooklyn Museum)

Today’s Reflections:

In today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist in the lectionary (Luke 7: 36-50), Jesus is a guest, but the unwelcome guest at the meal, when he is invited to the house of Simon the Pharisee.

Jesus is accused at different times of eating with publicans and sinners. As we read yesterday, he knows that his detractors point to him and say: ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ (Luke 7: 34).

But Jesus also eats with Pharisees too. Indeed, he may have had many meals with Pharisees, although the Gospel writers simply make a passing reference to the host without naming him (see Luke 14: 1-24), or perhaps ignore the meals altogether.

However, at this meal, I imagine an evening when Jesus is found eating with an eminently respectable member of society, a Pharisee, and a leading Pharisee at that too.

Jesus is invited to dinner by a leading Pharisee, Simon, although it is some time before we learn the name of the host that evening. Nor is it clear which city he lives in. Is it Capernaum? Is it Nain or Bethany? Saint John’s Gospel has a similar incident in Bethany (see John 12: 1-8), but it is a very different story, set in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. But do the venue or location really matter? What matters is that the man who should have been the host fails at his task, and the guest at the dinner becomes the true host.

Have you ever been at a dinner where you know some of the guests were invited simply to boost the ego of those who had invited them? Do you know what I mean by the dinner-party-name-dropping-syndrome?

Some might think Simon was suffering from DPND syndrome when he invited Jesus to dinner. I am not inclined to think so: after all, just a few verses earlier, Jesus has come in for some severe criticism, and has given a robust response.

Simon may have thought he was doing the decent thing … a Pharisee inviting a visiting rabbi and preacher to dinner would have been common courtesy and a common experience.

Nor is there is anything unusual, anything offensive, about the behaviour of Jesus at this meal. He takes his allotted or allocated place at the table, and he probably enjoyed the conversation with the people beside him and opposite him.

But then the drama begins.

A woman in the city, a woman known as a sinner, manages to get in. Now, despite popular portrayal and the myths of centuries, it does not necessarily mean that this woman was an open and public sinner, a figure who was known for her sinful ways.

Those who were blind or who were suffering from leprosy or a physical ailment were often treated as sinners. They were seen as having brought their visible scars on themselves, or to be suffering because of the sins of their parents or their ancestors.

Perhaps she was not the easy woman of popular story-telling. Perhaps she was blind, or was disabled physically in some way. We are not told.

And some people ask: how did she get into the house anyway?

But on a balmy summer’s evening in a Mediterranean house, people will normally eat in the inner courtyard that is the part of any house of substance. I just love those long evening dinners in Greece, where you break bread and pour wine for each other at long tables, and as you hand the bread to and pour the wine for the person next to you, the natural response is σε ευχαριστώ (seh efcharisto, thank you), the very phrase that gives us the word Eucharist, thanksgiving.

Anyway, as they were sitting around, perhaps in the inner courtyard, giving thanks to each other, this woman slips in, unnoticed. There was no need for her to gatecrash, she probably just slipped in silently and unnoticed.

At first, even Jesus would not have noticed her, for she stands behind him.

What hurt this unnoticeable woman on the margins so much that she cried so profusely? She cries so much that she must have been deeply hurt, thoroughly dejected and rejected.

I think Rubens and the other great painters get it wrong when they show her in front of Jesus, washing and drying his feet. This woman’s very marginalisation is symbolised in four ways:

• No-one noticed her coming in, or if they did, she was not worth going to the bother of throwing out.

• When she is noticed, she is regarded by all present as being a sinner, although Jesus tells us that she has been forgiven … probably long before this incident took place.

• Although Saint John’s Gospel names her as Mary, she remains unnamed, anonymous, throughout this story. At the beginning, Simon is unnamed, but eventually we get to know who he is. This woman is obviously well-known in her town, but no-one calls her by her name. And in Christian tradition, we have continued to deny her identity, often confusing her with Mary Magdalene and with the woman caught in adultery – two completely different people altogether.

• By her physical place at the table: she is standing behind Jesus, at the back, perhaps just where the servants would have stood as they waited to bring more dishes, or clear away some empty plates. But she takes the place of the servant at the table … in other words, she is a true deacon.

The woman’s behaviour embarrasses Simon. He never went through the normal courtesies and formalities of welcoming a guest into the house, seeing that his shoes were taken from him, given water to wash his hands, his feet washed, his head anointed.

But her alabaster and tears used for anointing and washing Jesus, his head and his feet, also prefigures something else: the women who come to wash the corpse of the Crucified Christ, and to anoint him in his grave (Luke 24: 1-11).

This woman prefigures those women who will be the first witnesses of the Resurrection … perhaps she even is to become one of them.

If so, then wanting to eject her becomes a rejection of the Easter faith.

Simon thinks Jesus should know who this woman really is, failing to realise that Jesus knows what is really going on in Simon’s heart.

Simon is embarrassed, not by what Jesus might know about him, but by the woman.

But Jesus is not embarrassed at all. Instead of confronting the woman, he confronts Simon, and he commends this woman for her faith. He sends her out in peace – the very dismissal that we should experience at the end of the Liturgy every Sunday, week-by-week. She is sent out as a disciple, as an apostle, as a missionary.

And Simon wants to eject her.

Not because of who she is, nor because of her reputation, but because she has shown him up to be a poor host.

There is a sharp contrast between the shallow faith of Simon, the pillar of the Church, and the woman, who has been pushed to the margins, a sharp contrast between those with apparent faith and no response, and those dismissed for having no faith but who are full in their response to Christ’s presence among us.

Simon fails in offering the proper hospitality to his guest. This woman on the other hand receives the full and generous hospitality of God.

Simon has no place in his house for this woman – and, to be honest, no place in his house for Jesus. But God has a place for her in his kingdom.

The conversation between Jesus and this woman is a model for all our encounters with people we see as different or as strangers.

Am I like Simon, and only willing to count in within my inner circle those who are like me and who behave according to my standards?

If I am going to enter into conversation with the stranger, am I open to listening to them, to talking openly and honestly with them about where they come from and what they believe?

When the conversation is over, will they remain strangers?

How open am I to new friendships?

How often do I think people get what they deserve rather than sympathising with their predicaments?

Do I live up to my weekly commission to go out into the world in peace to love and serve the world in the name of the Risen Christ?

Mary anoints the feet of Jesus in Bethany … a window in the north aisle of Saint Mary’s Church in St Neot’s, Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 17 September 2026):

The theme this week (13 -19 September 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Witness as With-ness’ (pp 38-39). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Canon Dr Peniel Rajkumar, Director of Global Mission and Theologian, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 17 September 2026) invites us to pray:

Christ who bore the cross, draw me into deeper discipleship that does not turn away from pain. Teach me to act with love where injustice burdens others.

The Collect:

Most glorious and holy God,
whose servant Hildegard, strong in the faith,
was caught up in the vision of your heavenly courts:
by the breath of your Spirit
open our eyes to glimpse your glory
and our lips to sing your praises with all the angels;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Merciful God,
who gave such grace to your servant Hildegard
that she served you with singleness of heart
and loved you above all things:
help us, whose communion with you
has been renewed in this sacrament,
to forsake all that holds us back from following Christ
and to grow into his likeness from glory to glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Saint Sophia and her daughters Pistis, Elpis and Agape depicted in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopianó in Crete … they are commemorated on 17 September (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

Ludwig returns to Cambridge with his identical twin brother, but can I solve the mystery of Darwin and the missing link?

The Backs and King’s College are among many of the familiar locations that appear as scenes in the BBC crime drama series ‘Ludwig’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I am delighted that the detective drama Ludwig has returned to the BBC with a second series that began last week (20 August 2026), having enthusiastically watched the first series in 2024.

In both series of Ludwig, David Mitchell stars as John Taylor, a reclusive crossword setter and puzzle maker who publishes his books under the pen name ‘Ludwig’, and his missing identical twin brother, James Taylor, a successful detective chief inspector in the Cambridge police force.

As an enthusiastic fan of the Guardian crossword each day, I was interested to see that the Guardian’s crossword editor Alan Connor was involved in designing the crosswords used in the opening titles of the series; indeed, he also created a series of Ludwig-themed puzzles in the Guardian.

Throughout each episode, I am watching for familiar locations in Cambridge, where much of the plots and storylines are set, including the Backs and the River Cam, King’s College, Queens’ College, Queens’ Lane, Saint John’s College, the Bridge of Sighs, the Old Schools and All Saints’ Passage.

Almost three million viewers watched Episode 1 in Series 2 on BBC 1 last Thursday night (20 August 2026), with Episode 2 going out at 9 pm tonight (27 August 2026). The first three episodes in Series 2 are now available on BBC iPlayer and the remaining three episodes are due to be released on BBC iPlayer on 10 September.

‘Stands the Church clock at ten to three?’ (Rupert Brooke) … the clock at Grantchester Church, which features in the crime series ‘Grantchester’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In Series 1, John Taylor works his way into the Cambridgeshire Police posing as his missing identical twin brother James. As a fake cop, he uses his pedantic puzzle-solving skills to solve some complex murders in and around Cambridge that make normally sedate Cambridge look like a more dangerous place to live in than Albert Square in EastEnders.

Oxford has Inspector Morse, but Cambridge has had its share of television sleuths too, including the vicars in the ITV detective drama Grantchester (2014-2026), filmed mainly in the village of Grantchester and in central Cambridge, with locations that include King’s Parade, Saint John’s College and the River Cam.

In addition, the four episodes of Porterhouse Blue (1987), a Channel 4 comedy series adapted from Tom Sharpe’s 1974 novel, were filmed mainly in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where I was a student over the years on a number of courses in association with the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies (IOCS).

Sidney Sussex College provided the location for the Channel 4 comedy series ‘Porterhouse Blue’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

BBC’s Ludwig is primarily set in and filmed in Cambridge. The actor David Mitchell went to Peterhouse in Cambridge in 1993 to study history, and as an undergraduate he joined the Cambridge Footlights dramatic club.

Ludwig inevitably includes numerous positioning shots – usually aerial – of Cambridge. The locations, backdrops and shots include King’s College, the River Cam, Saint John’s College and the Bridge of Sighs, Queens’ College, Queens’ Lane and the Mathematical Bridge, Silver Street, Silver StreetBridge and the Anchor, and the Millpond.

Episode 3 next week in the new series has many street scenes in central Cambridge, including Portugal Place, Market Hill, Trinity Lane and Garrett Hostel Bridge. But there are many fictional locations too, including the ‘Scholar's Fountain’ and Turing Lane. The theatre where last week’s murder scene is located is certainly not in Cambridge … it is, in fact, the Theatre Royal in Windsor.

The fictional Cambridge Police Authority station was filmed at Stockley Park Business Centre, a glass-fronted modern business park building in outer London. The grim offices of the fictional East Anglia Advertiser have been filmed at Pentland site off Squires Lane in Finchley. Its sad decline as a newspaper reminds me of the decline of the Lichfield Mercury a few years ago.

Locations beyond Cambridge include Moor Park Golf Club in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, North Mymms Park near Hatfield in Hertfordshire and locations in and around London including Ham Yard Hotel.

Doppelganger or ‘missing link’? … Charles Darwin’s plaque in the Great Gate at Christ’s College(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Back in Cambridge last month, introducing a friend from Ireland to the Cambridge I have known for 20 years, the question of a doppelganger or curious lookalike surfaced in a humorous moment at the Great Gate or porters’ lodge at Christ’s College.

This gate and tower, which have been restored and regilded in recent years, date back to the 16th century when Christ’s College was founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort. As we stood there looking into First Court and the chapel, an American couple commented, half joking and wholly in earnest, on the likeness of the plaque behind me of Charles Darwin.

I have been a guest in Christ’s College many times, and I have preached in the chapel and was a visiting lecturer back in 2009. So I have always been aware of Darwin’s place in the history of the college. But there have also been rumours in family lore and legend that Charles Darwin was related to the Comberford family of Comberford Hall.

The nearest thing I can find to an actual link, though. is through a web of marriages rather than any direct genealogical connection. Charles Darwin’s father, Robert Waring Darwin, grew up as the step-brother of Sacheverell Chandos-Pole. Sacheverell’s son, the Revd William Chandos-Pole, held a kinship equivalent to a first cousin of Charles Darwin through marriage, and his son later had family ties that had a brief connection with Comberford Hall.

First Court and the Chapel in Christ’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I have described this tenuous relationship as a true ‘missing link’, but any direct connection between Charles Darwin and Comberford Hall is extremely remote, and indirect, and I have only traced these through collateral marital relations in Staffordshire. Perhaps I need Ludwig’s puzzle-solving skills if I am ever going to find this ‘missing link’.

But there is another puzzle in Ludwig: is the plot about a missing identical twin brother, about a doppelganger, or about a personality disorder?

The BBC confirmed last month that it has commissioned a third series of Ludwig. We may have to wait until then to put other pieces in the puzzle back into place.

All Saints’ Passage … one of the familiar scenes in Cambridge that provide locations for ‘Ludwig’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greeks have a word for it: 67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace

A statue of Eirene, the Greek goddess of Peace, with a laurel wreath and a cornucopia, at Vergina restaurant in Platanias, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Stony Stratford Playreaders this week have been reading Peace (Εἰρήνη), the anti-war play with timeless value by Aristophanes. He is one of the greatest comedians in classical literature, with a special sense of humour, and he wrote many comedies and satires.

In Greek mythology, Eirene (Εἰρήνη) was the goddess of peace, and she was a symbol of spring, wealth and order. She is depicted in art her statues and in art as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, sceptre and a torch or rhyton. She is usually said to be the daughter of Zeus and Themis and the sister of Dike and Eunomia.

The Greek word εἰρήνη (eirēnē) means peace, quiet and rest. In ancient Greek, it meant a time without war but it also speaks of more than just a lack of war: it describes wholeness, harmony, quietness, and a state of general well-being or flourishing.

It comes from a word that means to join together. Peace brings things back into a whole. It comes from verb εἴρω (eiro), to join or bind together that which has been separated, binding or joining together again what had been separated or divided and thus setting at one again.

Older theories also link the word εἴρω (eírō), ‘to speak, say’. We might compare it with the word ῥήτρα (rhḗtra), a verbal agreement or treaty.

A poster for a Shadow Puppet Theatre production of ‘Eirene’ by Aristophenes in Thessaloniki

The idea of the Common Peace (Κοινὴ Εἰρήνη, Koinē Eirēnē) was one of the most influential concepts of 4th century BCE Greek political thought, along with the idea of Panhellenism. The term described both the concept of a desirable, permanent peace between the Greek city-states (πόλεις, poleis) and a sort of peace treaty that fulfilled the three fundamental criteria of this concept: it had to include all the Greek city-states, it had to recognise the autonomy and equality of all city states without regard for their military power, and it had to be intended to remain in force permanently.

The advocates of the Common Peace saw it as a way to end the endemic warfare which engulfed the Greek poleis after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE. From the King’s Peace of 387-386 BCE down to the foundation of the League of Corinth in 338 BCE, the idea of the Common Peace influenced all peace treaties between Greek poleis. In the end, however, it turned out that only a strong hegemonic power could maintain a comprehensive peace for long.

The concept has been revived in modern times, and in the 20th century it was a foundation stone of international organisations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.

‘Eirene’ by Aristophenes continues to appeal to adults and children alike in Greece

The Septuagint or Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible regularly uses εἰρήνη to translate the Hebrew shalom (שלום), a word that embraces completeness, prosperity, and relational harmony with God, neighbour, and creation. Priestly benedictions, such as Numbers 6: 26, anticipated a day when the Lord would ‘give you peace’. First-century Jews greeted one another with ‘peace’, and Jesus’ disciples continued the practice (see Luke 10: 5-6).

In the Greek New Testament, the word εἰρήνη (eirēnē) or peace is much like the Hebrew word shalom (שלום). It occurs over 90 times, and means inner calm, well-being, and right relationships with others. Well-known and well-loved examples include:

• πορεύου εἰς εἰρήνην, Go in Peace (Luke 7: 50; 8: 48);
• ἰρήνη τῷ οἴκῳ τούτῳ, Peace to this house (Luke 10: 5);
• Εἰρήνη ἀφίημι ὑμῖν, εἰρήνην τὴν ἐμὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν, My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you (John 14: 27);
• Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν, Peace be with you (Luke 24: 36; John 20: 19, 20-21, 26).

Every Pauline letter opens with the twin blessing ‘grace and peace’ (for example, see Romans 1: 7; Ephesians 1: 2) and most conclude with a similar wish (see Romans 15: 33). Peter, John and Jude follow the same pattern (see I Peter 1: 2; II John 1: 3; Jude 1: 2). These formulas are more than courteous salutations – they declare and confer the benefits of God’s favour and covenant well-being on those who receive the greeting.

Saint Irene (left), Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara … three women saints in a fresco in the Church of Panagia Dexia in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the Greek Orthodox tradition and in popular Greek piety today, there are three popular saints with the name Irene.

Saint Irene, Saint Catherine and Saint Barbara are three saints who are often found together in icons and frescoes in Greek churches. They form a traditional grouping, such as the Apostles Peter and Paul, as an icon of Church Unity, Saint Paul and Sant Barnabas or Saint Paul and Saint Titus as missionary companions, the three Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus), and the Three Holy Hierarchs (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom).

Saint Irene is one of three saints and sisters – Irene, Agape and Chioni – who were born in Thessaloniki and who were martyred there for their faith in the year 304 CE. Their names mean Peace, Love and Purity, and their feast day is on 3 April.

The story of their martyrdom is the subject of Dulcitius, a 10th-century Latin drama by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, the first-known female playwright.

Irene, Agape and Chione were brought before Dulcitius, governor of Macedonia, on the charge of refusing to eat food that had been offered in sacrifice to the gods. When Agape and Chionia again refused to eat this food, they were burned alive.

Dulcitius found that Irene was keeping prohibited Christian books that she had taken with her when she fled to the mountains. Dulcitius ordered Irene to be stripped and exposed in a brothel. When no one mistreated her in the brothel, the governor gave Irene a second chance. When she refused this, Dulcitius sentenced her to death and her books found were burned with her.

Saint Irene (752-803), a Byzantine empress who was instrumental in restoring the use of icons in the Orthodox Church … a fresco in a church in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A second significant Saint Irene in the Orthodox Calendar is Saint Irene (752-803), a Byzantine empress who was instrumental in restoring the use of icons in the Orthodox Church. She was the wife of the Byzantine emperor Leo IV, and when her husband died in 780, she became guardian of their 10-year-old son, Constantine VI, and co-emperor with him. Later that year she crushed a plot by the iconoclasts or opponents of the use of icons to put Leo’s half-brother, Nicephorus, on the throne.

The use of icons had been prohibited since 730. When one of the Empress Irene’s supporters, Tarasius, was elected patriarch of Constantinople, he summoned the Council of Constantinople in 786 and then the Seventh Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787 and restored the reverence of images.

Constantine VI banished his mother from court, but she later had her son arrested and blinded. From 797, she reigned alone as emperor for five years until she was deposed in 802 and exiled to the island of Lesbos. She is remembered for her zeal in restoring icons and her feast day is celebrated on 9 August.

Saint Irene of Lesbos with Saint Raphael and Saint Nicholas … an icon in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There is a third Saint Irene in the Greek Orthodox tradition and popular piety: Saints Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene of Lesbos (Ραφαήλ, Νικόλαος και Ειρήνη) are venerated as saints and martyrs.

According to legend, they lived on the island of Lesbos in the 15th century and were killed by Turkish raiders on 9 April 1463. Raphael was the abbot of the monastery of Karyes, near the village of Thermi, Nicholas was a deacon in the monastery, and Irene was the 12-year-old daughter of the village mayor: she was brutally executed and burned inside a clay cask in front of her parents.

The site of their martyrdom was excavated in 1959 and the relics of the saints are kept in a monastery that was rebuilt on Karyes, about 12 km from Mytilene, the island capital. The three saints were canonised in 1970. The monastery has become a prominent centre of pilgrimage.

A quiet corner in the monastery of Agia Irini, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

One of my favourite places in Rethymnon for peace and quiet, with time to be calm and to pray is the Monastery of Aghia Irini, about 5 km south of Rethymnon in the mountains above the town, and one of the oldest monasteries in Crete. Various accounts say it was founded sometime between 961 and 1204, and it was certainly built before 1362, when it is escribed in a Venetian document.

The monastery was destroyed several times during the many revolutions in Crete against Ottoman rule. During the last Cretan revolution of 1897-1898, the Turks burnt the monastery, the ruined monastery was formally closed in 1900, and the ruins remained deserted throughout most of the 20th century.

Sister Akaterina, who once brought me on a tour of the monastery some years ago, told of how the Metropolitan of Rethymnon, the late Bishop Theodoros Tzedakis, had a vision in 1989 for its restoration and invited a group of nuns to form a new community at Aghia Irini.

The nuns moved into the buildings and restoration work began in 1990. At the time, Aghia Irini was a jumble of dilapidated buildings. Today, it must be one of the most beautiful monasteries in Crete, and the restoration work has received architectural and cultural awards. The church was officially opened in 2003, and was consecrated in 2011 by Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria. The buildings include an older three-aisled church of Saint Irene, Saint Catherine and Saint Euphemia.

An icon of Aghia Irini (Αγία Ειρήνη) or Saint Irene by Alexandra Kaouki … a present from Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When I was in Rethymnon last year for a five-day ‘mini-retreat’ in Crete during Holy Week and Easter, my friend Alexandra Kaouki (Αλεξανδρα Καουκι), one of the foremost icon writers in Rethymnon today, gave me a gift of one of her early icons, depicting Aghia Irini (Αγία Ειρήνη) or Saint Irene, completed in 2012.

Saint Irene seemed such a special choice for me that weekend. Alexandra explained how she thought it was appropriate for me because of my campaigning past, as the saint’s name means ‘Peace’, and because I had written appreciatively in the past about Aghia Irini convent in the hills above Rethymnon.

A fresco depicting Saint Irene or Aghia Irini by Alexandra Kaouki in a church in Rethymnon

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, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas

58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany

59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind

60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow

61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’

62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’

63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’

64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)

65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)

66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace

Series to be continued

‘Eirene’ by Aristophenes continues to appeal to adults and children alike in Greece