I am a natural hermit. Of the last forty-two years, I’ve shared a home for only twelve. I thrive on solitude and have developed a peculiar low-input lifestyle that few people…
This issue of the Friend is devoted to words, writing and books. Quakers, since the seventeenth century, have had a very close association with the written word. Books, despite a…
The inspiring story of how the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU) ‘China Convoy’ brought medical and relief supplies to a devastated China in the dark years of the 1940s is told in A…
David Bleakley’s father worked in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and once put rivets into the hull of the Titanic. His son followed in his footsteps and did an…
At a meeting held in London on 2 November Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, announced the new London rate for the Citizens UK Living Wage. It is £9.40 an hour – up from…
Towards the end of 1915 news began to filter through to Britain of terrible massacres in Armenia. The Friend recorded a disturbing statistic on 15 October: In the House of Lords,…
It is sometimes hard to imagine that eighteen years ago we were making our way from Canada to the UK looking for a more peaceful, meaningful way of life and ended up being wardens…
As a prisoner with an indefinite sentence, I came to prison with a lack of direction, little to aspire to in the way of positive role models, and a pro-criminal attitude that I had…
Prison is a place where people are sent as a punishment, not for further punishments… Human beings whose lives have been reckoned so far in costs – to society, to the criminal…
‘Deeply unsettled’ is how I would describe the climate in our prisons today. Changes to the National Offender Management Service, introduced in the last parliament, have been…
I believe peace is not gotten from a silver plate. You need to work for it. You have to do something extraordinary. Sometimes seeking for peace demands that you swallow your pride.…
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