大象传媒

The new series of The Book Programme begins tomorrow, Saturday, at 11.30 am on 大象传媒 Radio Ulster. In tomorrow's programme, I interview Melvyn Bragg about his new media blockbuster 鈥淭welve Books that Changed The World鈥� (Hodder Hardback), our book group gives us their thoughts on Philip Pullman's 鈥淣orthern Lights鈥� (Scholastic Children鈥檚 Books), and we review Liam Browne's 鈥淭he Emigrant鈥檚 Farewell鈥� (Bloomsbury), and Lucy Caldwell's 鈥淲here They Were Missed鈥� (Penguin).

The Orange Order has released this statement to the press regarding Brian Kennaway's much talked-about new book. The statement is printed in full below. The section relating most directly to Brian Kennaway reads as follows:

Rev. Brian Kennaway, who is a member of Christian Crusaders LOL No.1339 has provided what appears to be a personalised and, in the context of the most recent years, a partial account and understanding of events. He is absolutely entitled to his own opinion, and has clearly expressed this in his book. While anyone is at liberty to try and write and be published, what interests us is that this book appears to have been supported by the Community Relations Council. We have now requested, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, details of the grant application and the factors that led to public money being used to help support this book, which is, as far as we are concerned, a personalised account of events.

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Congratulations to Ralph McLean and Kerry Turner. Their beautiful baby girl arrived yesterday, weighing in at a formidable 10lbs 12 ounces -- and she was apparently born wearing iPod headphones. Kerry and Ralph still have to decide on a name. Given Ralph's love of all things Presleyan, various female forms of "Elvis" have been suggested by helpful passers-by around Broadcasting House. I suggested "K D Lang McLean Turner".

It always takes my brain a few hours to settle down again after presenting the Friday morning call-in show on Radio Ulster. It's broadcasting without a safety net -- the best kind of broadcasting, if you ask me. Today, one of our callers -- an elderly lady from Coleraine -- got herself into a fuss over the disgraceful state of public toilets in Portrush. With a novelist's eye for detail, she described the appalling state of one particular lavatory. Given the very serious topics we were covering today, I asked her if she was possibly over-reacting. "Listen son," she told me with great seriousness, "I would rather wet myself than use a public toilet in Portrush." I corpsed.

David Trimble's speech at last night's book launch has .

He wasn't biting his tongue tonight. Speaking at the launch of Brian Kennaway's new book The Orange Order: A Tradtion Betrayed, the former Ulster Unionist leader expressed his disappointment at how the Order's leadership had behaved in recent years.

Though Mr Trimble was careful to say he was himself still a proud Orangeman, and planned to continue his membership of the Order, he took aim at the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. He highlighted two episodes in particular that clearly angered him: (1) The apparent misrepresentation, before a House of Commons Select Committee, of the results of a secret ballot in the Portadown District on the question whether to reverse the Order's policy of not engaging with the Parades Commission; and (2) the Grand Lodge's failure to circulate a letter from Mr Trimble giving his response to the Order's concerns regarding the Belfast Agreement.

The behaviour of the Orange Order's leadership over the Drumcree stand-off were tantamount to a participation in a "Faustian Pact", Mr Trimble claimed: dark forces within Northern Ireland were happy to use the Loyal Institution to create and exploit disorder on our streets in an effort to bring down the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Trimble's remarks surprised some in the room by their directness. And it was large and wide-ranging gathering: Ruth Dudley Edwards, Fr Tim Bartlett (representing the Catholic Primate, Archbishop Sean Brady), the national secretary of the Hibernians, the American Consul-General, the Presbyterian Moderator, various grand masters from the Orange Order, the former IRA volunteer Anthony McIntyre, academics (such as Paul Bew and Richard English), British and Irish civil servants and Stormont officials.

It's been released to co-incide with the start of the 2006 'marching season' here in Nothern Ireland. Nice timing. by Brian Kennaway, Presbyterian minister and former chair of the Order's Education Committee, lambasts the Order, in no uncertain terms: an institution that has lost its moral direction, abandoned responsibility in a divided society, forsaken its original Christian ethos, and embraced political opportunism. The book is being serialised this week in the and Brian Kennaway is my guest on next week's Sunday Sequence programme , when we'll convene a panel to examine his claims. He's also making a visit to tonight's Hearts and Minds programme. And I'm off tonight to the book's launch at Union Theological College in Belfast. If you were Brian Kennaway, who would you invite to make a speech at the launch of a book lambasting the Orange Order? The former Unionist leader David Trimble, of course. (Wasn't he the Orange sash-wearing politician who famously 'danced' along the road, hand-in-hand, with Ian Paisley at the in 1995 to the rapturous applause of Orangemen after they won their stand-off with the nationalist community of the Garvaghy Road?)

If you were David Trimble, would you accept the invitation? I'll tell you later what the soon-to-be Lord Trimble has to say at tonight's book launch.

Back to evangelicals and their debate about re-branding. While browsing the website (always worth a browse), I came across by the American historian Philip Jenkins about how the media may shape ideas about religion and culture. Here's the executive summary:

The largest area of religious life under-represented by the mass media is normality. Given conventional priorities, the customary and unsensational is not news, so that media stories about Islam are likely to expose terrorism and subversion rather than everyday piety, while according to most media accounts, the Roman Catholic church is either engaging in moral crusades or picking up the pieces after the latest sex scandal.

Jenkins is clearly incensed by the way media coverage "of any topic" can involve the reduction of complex movements and ideas to "a few selected code-words", which purport to act as guideposts to the perplexed, but which almost inevitably muddy up the meaning of things:

One such demon word is fundamentalism, originally a description of a particular approach to reading Christian Scriptures, but now a catch-all description for supernaturally based anti-modernism, repression, and misogyny. Within the past few years, evangelical has been similarly debased, gaining its popular connotations of white conservative politics. Most pernicious of all, perhaps, is the benevolent-sounding word "moderate," which equates to "the side that we (the media) agree with in any religious controversy, no matter how bizarre their ideas, or how bloodcurdlingly confrontational their rhetoric." In this lexicon, likewise, theological is an educated synonym for nitpicking triviality.

Here's your chance to join Rowan Williams for dinner as one of the panel of judges selecting the winner of the the . To get your place at the table, write a 500-word review of a book first published between July 2004 and April 2006. The deadline is May 23 2006. Last year's winner of the 拢15,000 prize was , the Bishop of Durham (though, apparently, you don't have to be a bishop to win!). Wright won with his (massive) book The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God (SPCK).

They're looking for "theological" books. By which, I suspect, they mean books written by professional scholars for professional scholars. I doubt they would shortlist a novel, for example; even though, for my money, some of the most compelling theological explorations are works of fiction rather than heavily-footnoted 'academic' tomes. But please don't read that last sentence as an encouragement to propose The Da Vinci Code.

With that caveat, let's have your suggestions.

My suggestion that Pope Benedict might revise the Catholic Church鈥檚 guidance on the use of condoms in the fight against HIV and Aids has been challenged by a couple of you. Ambrose asks:

How can you predict that the current pope will change the policy on condoms when he has already ruled out the use of condoms in Africa?

Ambrose is right to note that the pope, when addressing African bishops at the Vatican last June, as a general health strategy in favour of 鈥渁bstinence and fidelity鈥�. My suggestion, however, relates not to this general strategy but to a specific scenario 鈥� where one or both partners in a marriage has been infected with HIV. In fact, I think the 鈥渓esser of two evils鈥� principle could consistently be extended to shape a general strategy (and many involved in HIV prevention and response across africa will be praying for a change in the church's general strategy). But any change in policy, in the first instance, would, I think, emerge from a response to the marital scenario I鈥檝e outlined.

On a separate point, Allen takes issue with my claim that a condom is important in a marriage even when both partners ate HIV-positive:

I don't understand the case when the couple both are HIV+ . Surely then it doesn鈥檛 matter if they have sex without a condom...

It may seem counter-intuitive to suggest that HIV-positive couples also need to be concerned about safe sex, but that is . HIV-positive couples need to protect themselves against infection from additional strains of HIV, particularly a drug-resistant strain. This is another scenario the Catholic Church鈥檚 moral theologians need to consider very carefully.

What are the chances that Pope Benedict might actually make a public statement granting permission for condoms to be used within marriage when one or both of the partners is HIV positive? arguing for just such as change in church policy are the latest in a series of similar statements from church leaders including Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels and Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster. A change in policy of this kind would not require the pope to challange the Catholic Church's general opposition to artificial contraception, as articulated in Paul VI's 1968 encyclical . Instead, a well-established theological principle ("the lesser of two evils") could be invoked to draw a clear moral distinction between the use of a condom in family planning and the use of a condom in the fight against HIV and Aids. It seems obvious to many that these two scenarios are morally distinguishable. The question is: Will Pope Benedict see it that way, given that his predecessor plainly did not?

An earlier comment here from Candadai Tirumalai makes an iteresting point:

I think Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope Benedict are two different men. This is not the first time elevation to the highest office has changed the man. The former hardline theological adviser to Pope John Paul now takes a much broader view of his leadership. Hence his meeting with the dissenting or radical Hans Kung. Surprising developments may follow as his papacy unfolds.

I agree. And I wouldn't be surprised if Benedict announces the guidance Cardinal Martini and others are now inviting. Indeed, a . Watch this space.

There's a nice piece about the massive worldwide blogging boom in the . For those of you still wondering:

The word 鈥渂log鈥� appears to date back to 1997, when one of the few practitioners at the time, Jorn Barger, called his site a 鈥渨eblog鈥�. In 1999, another user, Peter Merholz, playfully broke the word into 鈥渨e blog鈥�, and somehow the new term鈥攂log鈥攕tuck as both a verb and a noun.

Michael Jackson apparently regards himself as an "evangelical" Christian. Who knew? Though I doubt this association was in the mind of John Buckeridge, the editor of Christianity magazine, who uses his to voice exasperation at the popular connotations that now haunt the 'e' word:

I鈥檓 tired of being tarred with the identities of men with megaphones who shout 鈥榟ell鈥�, 鈥榳rath鈥� and 鈥榙amnation鈥� at passers-by and fail to say, 鈥榣ove鈥�, 鈥榞race鈥� or 鈥榝orgiveness鈥�. I鈥檓 tired of being tarred with the identities of the 鈥榓nti-everything鈥� brigade 鈥� who angrily list the things they are against and claim to speak for 鈥榚vangelicals鈥�, but actually have a tiny support base. And I鈥檓 tired of being tarred with US right wing foreign policy.

Buckeridge says the word 'evangelical', like other words such as 'gay', 'ecstacy', and 'wicked', has changed its meaning. There's no doubt that the term 'evangelical' is often used, particularly in media accounts, as a synonym of 'fundamentalist'. But the term 'evangelical' is a difficult one nothwithstanding the political caricatures it now attracts. There is no clear, undisputed definition of the term, even among self-styled evangelicals. Anyone like to risk a definition?

I well remember the evangelical theologian comment on the distinction between an evangelical and a fundamentalist: an evangelical, he said, is a fundamentalist with table manners.

Then there's the question of which alternative terms would helpfully re-brand contemporary evangelicalism. Some possibilities immediately suggest themselves: "conservative Christians", "biblical Christians", "biblical literalists". But my personal favourite is this one: "paleo-orthodox". Any takers?

My interview with Hans K眉ng, in which he speaks about his private meeting with Pope Benedict at Castel Gandolfo, gets reported by John Allen, Vatican Correspondent of the National Catholic Reporter, in the current edition of his column

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The curtain went up on the now annual last Friday in Dublin's Abbey Theatre with "vsprs", the newest offering from Alain Platel's , a reworking of famous Marian Vespers. I was there for the opening night and it was one of the most profoundly moving evenings of theatre I have ever experienced. It was both dance and opera; a play and a philosophical exposition on life/death, heaven/hell and madness/sanity.

It would be easy to describe the various components Platel has brought together here (baroque, jazz and gypsy music, plus ten extremely accomplished dancers), but this really would not do justice to the total effect, which is at once mesmerising, unnerving and utterly arresting.

There are two UK venues in the production's current European tour: London (Sadler's Wells, 17-20 May), and Newcastle (Theatre Royal, 23, 24 May).

This is Ireland's Catholic Primate, Archbishop Sean Brady. By all accounts, he's not a happy man this week. There has been a remarkable ourpouring of public support across Ireland for Fr Iggy O'Donovan, the priest in Drogheda who invited the local Church of Ireland minister, Michael Graham, to concelebrate Mass with himself and two other Catholic priests at their Augustinian priory last Sunday to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. A Catholic moral theologian, Professor Vincent Twomey, told me today that Fr Iggy's action is a very serious breach of canon law. Indeed, he says it not only merits "punishment", but that the church's law requires punishment in a case its kind -- and perhaps even by the Vatican directly. He then tried to make an argument that Fr Iggy seemed to him "theologically naive" -- as if this may both account for his ecclesiastical crime and also constitute some mitigation in any future church court. Since Fr Iggy is a theologian himself who spends part of each year lecturing at a theological college in Rome, this may be wishful thinking on the part of Vincent Twomey (who is, incidentally, a former student of Pope Benedict). Are we now likely to see Fr Iggy called before an ecclesiastical court in Dublin or Rome? It's your move, Archbishop.

In an earlier post, I suggested that the discovery of Tiktaalik, the "missing link" fossil, would not dent the confidence of Creationists, notwithstanding the claims by some in the media that the find would hammer a nail in the coffin of that religious movement.

Today on Sunday Sequence, we invited a Creationist to go head-to-head with an evolutionary biologist. I asked the biologist, from Queen's University, if the fossil strengthened the case for evolution. Not really, was essentially his reply; evolution is so well attested in any case that it wouldn't need a fossil find of this kind to support it. The Creationist, Dr Robert Beckett -- an Evangelical Presbyterian minister with a PhD in animal breeding -- doubted that the fossill was a transitional form of life; instead, he thought it was simply a fish fossil. But, he went on, even if it is a transitional form of life, Tiktaalik would not challenge Creationism, any more than any other fossil constitutes a challenge to Creationism.

I'd predicted this response from Creationism in my earlier post, but it does raise an interesting question about just what kind of scientific evidence would be sufficient to challenge a religious view like Creationism. Would any discovery amount to a knock-down-drag-out refutation of that view?

This, of course, is not merely a question one could ask about Creationism. What about the belief that God exists. What kind of scientific evidence, even in principle, would constitute a refutation of that belief? We entered the territory of that question, also this morning, with the scientist Lewis Wolpert, who was talking about his new book, , which attempts to give an "evolutionary" account of religious belief.

The broadcaster and novelist Melvin Bragg was sounding just a little bit defensive when I talked to him the other day. He鈥檚 promoting his new book at the minute, Twelve Books that Changed the World, and has irritated a lot of fellow writers by not including a single novel on his list. Bragg鈥檚 dozen also leaves out Milton, but includes the first rule book of the Football Association and Britain鈥檚 first sex manual. You can鈥檛 please everybody. But it got me wondering: could I come up with a dozen Irish books that changed the world? I know that any attempted list is bound to start a row. But, after many, many office debates, here is my very tentative list (in no particular order). Let battle commence. (P.s., Yes, I tried to think of a book by a female author.)

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922). Topping most lists of the best novels of the 20th century, though famously difficult to read, Ulysses weighs in at 267,000 words. Joyce's groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness technique and his innovative approach to language, ideas, and the novel as a form, changed the direction of subsequent western literature and helped Joyce earn wide acclaim as the most influential writer of the 20th century.

Harry Ferguson, Patent Specification for the Ferguson tractor system (1926). The Northern Irish inventor who gave the world its most influential tractor and transformed modern agriculture. Henry Ford said Ferguson was the equal of the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Burke is often described as the father of modern conservative thought. His most famous book continues to influence leading conservative thinkers in their view that societies are best transformed by gradual change rather than political upheaval.

James Ussher, Annals of the World (1658). Ussher was Archbishop of Armagh when he calculated the date of the earth鈥檚 creation: 23 October, 4004 BC. Though clearly an idea at odds with subsequent science, Ussher's book influenced popular thought for two centuries, and still plays a key role in the battle between creationism and evolution.

Frank Pantridge, A Mobile Intensive-Care Unit in the Management of Myocardial Infarction (1967). With this article, published in The Lancet, Professor Pantridge, a cardiologist at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, announced the development of the portable defibrillator, which has since saved the lives of countless cardiac patients and revolutionised emergency medicine across the world.

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (1905). Written from his prison cell at Reading Gaol, this explosive love letter has become a classic text in the politics of sexual identity and a sustained indictment of social intolerance.

Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist (1661). Born in Lismore Castle, in county Waterford, Robert Boyle is the founder of modern chemistry and this book, still regarded as a scientific masterpiece, marks the beginning of that new experimental science.

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897). The first full-length vampire novel, and one of the most influential gothic novels of all time, has had an enormous impact on global popular culture. It has inspired over a hundred feature films, a gothic tourist industry, and a dizzying variety of psychological interpretations.

John Bell, On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox (1964). Born in Belfast and educated at Queen鈥檚 University, John Bell鈥檚 five-page paper transformed the study of Quantum Mechanics. 鈥淏ell鈥檚 Theorem鈥� earned him a Nobel Physics prize nomination, and, had he lived longer, he might well have received it.

Francis Hutcheson, Inquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). The expression 鈥渢he greatest happiness of the greastest number鈥� was coined by this Irish thinker, who was born in Drumalig, county Down. A key figure in the Enlightenment, his ideas had a massive impact on American thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, and on the development of Utilitarianism 鈥� an approach to ethics which continues to have a massive impact on our world (and often summarized in the claim that 鈥渢he ends justify the means鈥�).

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver鈥檚 Travels (1726). Ireland鈥檚 internationally recognized writer is the undisputed master of satire. His most famous book is the most enduring satire in the English language, exploring politics, class, race, gender, science, education, love, and much more, with such merciless wit and cutting accuracy that its influence continues to pervade every aspect of popular culture 鈥� not to mention the nursery.

Ernest Walton, Disintegration of Lithium by Swift Protons (1932). The Methody-educated Irish physicist shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1951 with Sir John Cockcroft for splitting the atom. This single page-letter to the scientific journal Nature is a model of elegant understatement 鈥� after all, they were merely giving birth to the atomic age.

(Reprint from the Belfast Telegraph, Saturday 22 April 2006)

This is just my list; and, like all lists of its kind, it may say more about me than about Ireland, books or the world! But feel free to disagree (though give me some arguments at least), or even suggest your own alternative list in the comments.

I've been sitting in for Stephen Nolan this week, and couldn't resist the chance to ask 大象传媒 Radio Ulster listeners which Irish books they think changed the world (following Melvin Bragg's lead). After a few false starts (Helen Keller wasn't Irish, and Cat's Eye's were, alas, invented by an Englishman), their suggestions came in thick and fast. At the end of this morning's programme, I read out their list:

1. Ulysses by James Joyce
2. Frank Pantridge's invention of the mobile defibrillator
3. Lord Kelvin, for his contribution to the second law of thermodynamics
4. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (though they may just like the film)
5. The Book of Kells (but did anyone outside an Irish monastery really know of its existence?)
6. The US Declaration of Independence (John Gray from the Linenhall Library made that cheeky proposal)
7. Sir James Martin, for the invention of the first ejector seat

and my personal favourite:

8. Alfred Guinness, for the "invention" of Guinness. Well, if Melvin Bragg can include a speech and a patent under the heading "books", why can't we include the label on the front of a bottle of Guinness? It's a text of a kind, isn't it?

My blog's name is attracting some comment. I am not a parent, so naming my blog is as close as I get to burdening another human being with a .

Originally, "Will's World" seemed like a perfectly good online moniker. Then, just the other day, in a flash of creativity, Rory Connolly, one of our terribly bright New Media staff at the 大象传媒 came up with "Will and Testament". I was taken with it at the time, and since then ... well, I've bonded with it. seems to approve, which is very encouraging, commenting: "A better title for a blog especially when the latest post is entitled Executioner Pierrepoint." Very nice. I am even offered a few alternatives in case I have second (third?) thoughts: "Will & Grace" , "Will he or won't he?", "Thy will be done", "Good will", "Ill will", "Will power".

I think, to adopt the first of these, I'm most tempted by "Will & (Dis)grace".

There it is: The Missing Link. Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University discovered it on Ellesmere Island in Canada, which is 600 miles from the north pole in the Arctic Circle. I love the name: is an Inuktitut word meaning 'a shallow-water fish' and the fossil was given this name after a suggestion by local Inuit elders.

Ok, it's a fossil. What's its importance? The research institutions involved in the find have teamed up to produce a of the discovery. Palaeontologists say it is a key missing link between fish and land animals, showing how our ancestors first walked out of the water and on to dry land some 375 million years ago. If this is true, the fossil's significance for evolutionary explanation would be at least equal to , the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.

Tiktaalik is clearly exercising the minds of the Creationist community. Following the discovery, quite a view media commentators lauded the find as the final nail in the coffin of Creationism, and (to mix metaphors) another key piece in the evolutionary jigsaw. I doubt very much that Tiktaalik will have very much impact on Creationism. We'll test this point next week on Sunday Sequence, but my sense is that Creationism, as a religious perspective on science, will re-interpret all discoveries of this kind in a way that is consistent with the basic principles of Creationism. Either that, or Creationists will dispute the sigificance, or truth, of the discovery itself. One thing they will not do is abandon Creationism as a faith-perspective.

I've just interviewed Nicola Rossi, who grew up knowing Britain's most famous executioner as 'Uncle Albert'. Albert Pierrepoint wasn't her real uncle; Nicola's parents were regulars at the Manchester pub run by Albert and his wife Anne. The pub's name, Help the Poor Struggler, has a gothic quality given that its landlord was the Home Office's 'Number One Official Executioner'.

We'll be talking a lot about Albert Pierrepoint this week, with the launch of the new about his life. There's a fascinating online exhibition looking at three generations of executioners from this same family, .

In the end, Albert Pierrepoint came to believe that capital punishment is morally unjustified. That was after having executed 433 men and 17 women during his tenure at the Home Office (1932 - 1956), including some 200 Nazi war criminals, and Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain. He clearly took enormous pride in the almost scientific precision with which he carried out his task as an executioner -- sizing up a prisoner's height and build, then calculating the exact length of rope necessary to do the job as speedily and as humanely as possible.

I talked to Nicola about how albert might have felt, looking back on all those executions later in life and believing that they were morally unjustifed. That's quite a burden to carry. She says Albert believed his actions were morally comparable to a soldier obeying orders in a war. I'm not so sure. After all, Albert applied to the Home Office for the job to make some money on the side, and he only retired from the post in 1956 over an argument about how much he should have been paid. His job as executioner was kept a secret from all but his wife Anne: this was a parallel life. It may have eased his conscience later in life to believe that the Home Office's command structure gave some moral justification to those 'judicial killings'.

大象传媒 News is reporting that a head teacher has been following a police investigation into an honours for cash allegation. A piece of legislation has been dusted off and invoked in the case: the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act of 1925. When was the last time you heard that Act mentioned in the press?

But the arrest, and our continuing coverage of honours-related corruption allegations (let's call it the Cash for Coronets Affair), raises deeper questions about the place of gongs in a modern society. Is it possible to have a British-style honours system that doesn't have a corrupting influence on society? It's a pointed question for journalists: is it ever appropriate for a journalist (particularly one covering politics) to accept a government-approved honour?

Curiously enough, while the UK is starting to have a serious conversation about the use and abuse of honours, the Irish government of Bertie Ahern appears to be looking into the development of an equivalent honours system for the Republic.

On Easter Sunday, we broadcast an interview I conducted with the radical theologian Hans K眉ng. I was keen to discover his assessment of Pope Benedict鈥檚 first year at the helm of the Roman Catholic Church. K眉ng was surprisingly positive -- and surprisingly willing to talk about his now-famous, four-hour private dinner with the pope in the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo last September. To listen to the interview, go to the Sunday Sequence website. Click on the link below to read a transcript of the interview.

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I've been writing a feature article for the Belfast Telegraph: Twelve Irish Books that Changed the World. Obviously, the idea comes from Melvin Bragg's which accompanies a TV series he'll be presenting this month. I interviewed him recently for Radio Ulster's The Book Programme. Here's Bragg's dozen:

Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species (1859)
The First Rule Book of the Football Association (1863)
William Shakespeare - First Folio (1623)
Newton - Principia Mathematica (1687)
Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1776)
William Wilberforce - Speech to the House of Commons (May 12 1789)
The King James Bible (1611)
Patent Specification for Arkwright's Spinning Machine (1769)
Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
Michael Faraday - Experimental Research in Electricity (1855)
Marie Stopes - Married Love (1918)
Magna Carta (1215)

As you can see, Bragg has limited himself to British books that were agents of change in the world, which explains the absence of, say, Plato and Goethe. You'll also notice that he allows the term 'book' to cover just about any kind of document (a speech, a patent, a rule book, a sex manual, a play, etc.)

The interview set me thinking: could I come up with my own list of twelve Irish books that changed the world? And could I even find some Northern Irish books into the bargain? So, between making a couple of TV series and a few radio programmes of my own, I've been quietly forming my own list. To coincide with our launch of the new series of The Book Programme, I'll go into print with my very own Celtic Canon in the next few days. I've been asking everyone i know, and even strangers in lifts, which books they'd include.

Any ideas?

Next Wednesday marks the first anniversary of the election of I'll never forget the surprise -- shock, really -- that accompanied the announcement from the balcony overlooking St Peter's Square.

Expect a lot of "stock-taking" journalism next week, when media pundits will be grading his first year in office. To kick things off, tomorrow I'm going to interview the radical theologian and ask him to asssess Benedict's first twelve months in the driving seat of Catholic Church.

K眉ng is one of the most important Catholic theologians of the last entury, and taught alongside Joseph Ratzinger when the pope was a theology professor at the University of T眉bingen . Subsequently, K眉ng was stripped of his authority to teach at Catholic universities, by Pope John Paul, for questioning church teachings. When his former friend and colleague was elected pope last year, he said this:

The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope is an enormous disappointment for all those who hoped for a reformist and pastoral pope. But we must wait and see, for experience shows that the papacy in the Catholic Church today is such a challenge that it can change anyone: someone who went into the conclave a progressive cardinal can emerge as a conservative pope (Montini - Paul VI). Someone who went into the conclave a conservative cardinal can emerge as a progressive pope (Roncalli - Johannes XXIII). The name Benedict XVI leaves the possibility open for a more moderate policy. Let us therefore give him a chance: as with a president of the US, we should allow a new pope 100 days to learn.

And after 365 days, what will he make of it all?

It may be time to buy a new dictionary. The New Oxford Dictionary of English, which sits on my desk, next to my phone, boasts that it's "the world's most trusted dictionary". But I looked in vain there for entries featuring either "blog" or "blogospehere". No surprise, really. My dictionary is a 1997 publication, so it predates the coining of those terms. to the rescue: "The term blogosphere was coined on September 10, 1999 by Brad L. Graham, as a joke." And with this new blog, I pitch my tent in (the?) blogosphere. Better late than never, eh?