Here are some brand new headlines:

Disciples Reject Request to Add Lazarus to “The Twelve” Group Chat

A request to add Lazarus of Bethany to the disciples’ private messaging group has been rejected amid concerns that the name “The Twelve” would become inaccurate.

“No one doubts his commitment,” Peter explained. “Coming back from the dead gives him a fairly strong testimony. But once you start adding friends of Jesus, where do you stop? Bartimaeus? Jairus’s daughter? Nicodemus? The woman at the well?”

Despite its exclusive membership, “The Twelve” reportedly consists mainly of arguments about which disciple is the greatest, panicked messages about having to feed large crowds and James and John posting fire emojis after every encounter with a Samaritan.

Lazarus will remain in the larger “Followers of Jesus” group, where he has already received hundreds of messages asking what death was like and whether he is accepting speaking engagements.

“He doesn’t contribute to the family group,” said Lazarus’s sister, Martha. “You just get the occasional thumbs-up emoji. So I don’t know why anyone thinks he’ll suddenly become active on this other group. I think he’s muted it anyway after being bombarded with offers to buy second-hand grave clothes and fairly fresh spices.”

The controversy intensified after Andrew discovered that his brother Peter has a separate group with James and John called “Mountaintop Bants”. Thomas said he would not believe the group existed until somebody showed him the messages.

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Musk’s bid to add ‘Are We All in a Simulation?’ to Illuminati agenda fails again

Leaked minutes obtained by The Wycliffe Papers reveal trillionaire Elon Musk was unable to persuade the secret society that runs the world to discuss the theory that the universe is running inside a giant computer simulation, even under Any Other Business. “This whole thing is just some stupid conspiracy theory,” said one member of the Illuminati who preferred to remain nameless following a meeting at a mountain-top castle somewhere in Romania. “Every minute of every meeting is packed with crucial discussions about the manipulation of global currencies and weather patterns, engineering celebrity marriages and break-ups, and inserting masonic symbols into major awards ceremonies. Yet somehow Elon still finds a way to ask whether we’re all NPCs.”

Accompanying the minutes was a 76-page PowerPoint deck entitled ‘Guys, Seriously Though, What If We Are All Just Code?’ This contained a detailed proposal to locate the universe’s settings menu, and a draft email to the system administrator outlining a bid for a controlling share of the entire system.”

“It was embarrassing. Our secret cabal runs the world, not some super-intelligent aliens who have programmed us into synthetic reality!” the Illuminati member went on. “Doesn’t he know The Matrix was a movie? Even Bill Gates reckons it’s a dumb idea and he’s a software guy – kind of. Musk only gets away with it because he turns up with doughnuts: the real ones that are both delicious, nutritious and entirely unavailable to the public. Not the ones we dump on civilisation via mass-market doughnut chains. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!”

The source was subsequently unavailable for further comment.

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Did you know The Wycliffe Papers is now active on Instagram? Free jokes from the archive! And breaking new ones.

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And if you want even more jokes, and a sneak preview of what’s to come, become a Loyal Lollard - that’s a paid subscriber. On Saturday, in the Wycliffe Weekender, I’ll be dropping a load more headlines and asking for a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Your favourite joke might not make it to the main Thursday newsletter! Wanna be part of that, plus a monthly Zoom chat and a bunch of other goodies?

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And if you want another instalment of Field Notes of a Sitcom Writer:

Here’s my new productivity plan: go away. Check it out:

The Situation Room

Getting Everyone Else to Go Away

Int. Office. Home. Monday 9th March 2026. 8.23am…

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6 days ago · 1 like · James Cary

Turns out that 8.30pm on Tuesday wasn't terribly convenient either! But we had a good conversation. I hope you enjoy listening back to it.

Don’t quite know what to do about these monthly Zoom chats. All advice and suggestions gratefully received.

But THANK YOU for being a Loyal Lollard. I really do appreciate it.

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I’ve written some headlines I’d love to get your thoughts on. It REALLY does help me if I can get some feedback because I want the Thursday headlines to be total bangers - and I want The Wycliffe Papers to be consistently funnier than The Babylon Bee. There. I’ve said it.

So, don’t hold back. And leave a comment…

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Let’s get on with the headlines!

On 30th August, the Church of England remembers John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, which has inspired our first headline:

17^th-Century Bedford Jailer warns Inmate that New Book about a Pilgrim may be “a bit ‘on the nose’”

A jailer told The Wycliffe Papers that former tinker and religious nonconformist John Bunyan, was writing a book called ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ that he feared “lacked subtlety and subtext. The protagonist is a man of faith called Christian. He talks to people called Faithful, Talkative and Mr Worldly Wiseman. The sad giant is literally called Despair. It all feels a bit ‘on the nose’”.

However, the jailer admitted that he asked to see the next chapter because he wants to know whether Christian reaches the Celestial City. “I’m hooked, not least because I had assumed that Bunyan was a five-point Calvinist who believes in predestination. But he’s a master of jeopardy and there are times when I think Christian really isn’t going to make it. I found myself disturbing other prisoners by shouting ‘Get out of there!’ when Christian was at Vanity Fair. So I guess the book has got under my skin.”

I’ll be honest that Pilgrim’s Progress is a mini-obsession of mine, which I write about in The Gospel According to a Sitcom Writer.

Attendance at Eve’s Baby Shower “disappointing”, claims only guest

“I just felt sorry for her,” said one of the cherubim posted to guard the way back into the Garden of Eden. “She was expecting her first child, which sounds like the sort of occasion where people gather round, offer support, maybe bring a few small garments. But of course, there were no people: just Eve, and Adam hovering awkwardly nearby, and then me trying not to set fire to the decorations with my flaming sword.”

Gift-buying had been difficult admitted the angelic guard. “There was no registry, no tradition, and frankly no shops,” he said. “I considered fruit, but that felt theologically insensitive after the, erm, incident. In the end I just brought my ‘presence’ rather than ‘presents’ but that’s probably what everyone will say when they haven’t brought anything. In my case, my very presence is quite something I’m told, so at least there’s that.”

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And here’s one from the archives:

Medieval peasant girl way less happy than she realises, declares modern historian.

An English girl, who will get married in her local church to a hard-working boy from her village and live a life surrounded by her extended family and animals, “is not actually happy”, projects a modern historian. In a lengthy article for The Journal of Historical Analysis, Dr Margaret Hatherall explains that the girl’s experience of contentment is illusory. Feelings of connection to her family, her community, nature and God mask deep-seated frustrations that she was unable to acknowledge because of the constant distractions of fresh milk, religious festivals, a sense of purpose and unrelenting birdsong. “It must have been awful,” Dr Hatherall told The Wycliffe Papers. “She had a life that many today would envy, but did not realise it was, in fact, oppressive and problematic.”

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As the launch of Field Notes from a Sitcom Writer gets ever-nearer, chapters are being posted on The Situation Room and LinkedIn. Here’s the latest:

Why Writing a Sitcom Pilot is so very hard (and how it’s Jack Bauer’s fault)

Int. Office. Home. Friday 6^th March 2026. 9.26am

Writing a pilot sitcom script is a slog. You may be happy with your characters. You’ve got a decent situation. You’ve even got ideas for plots, stories and jokes. Isn’t it just a question of putting them all together? Job done?

No. Not even close. It’s way harder. Why?

Because you’re not entirely sure what the finished product is supposed to look like. When you’re developing a sitcom, you’re not just trying to write a funny script. You’re devising a template for all future episodes.

You’re not just baking a batch of delicious cookies to present to a roomful of TV executives. You’re not pitching a cookie or even a plate of cookies. You’re pitching a recipe which produces delicious cookies every single time. It is reliable. It’s certain.

That’s the appeal of situation comedy. It’s a cookie. It’s your favourite cookie. And it’s your favourite because you know what it tastes like. Every episode is the same. You put on an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine because you’re expecting to see Jake goofing around trying to be John McClane (Bruce Willis) from Die Hard, whilst yearning for a father figure. Amy will try to be top of the class. Rosa will refuse to emotionally engage. Boyle will be creepily friendly. And so on. You can fill in the rest if you’ve seen the show. And you will probably smile when you read this word: Wunch.

Writing a Brooklyn Nine-Nine script is comparatively easy. So many episodes have been made, and all of the variables have been decided. You know the characters. You know the kinds of stories the show does. You know what an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is meant to look like. If we’re honest, AI could probably have a decent go. With some decent prompts and a gag pass, it might even be passable (although not broadcastable).

This used to be the way into the industry in the USA. Take your favourite long-running TV show like Cheers or M*A*S*H or Frasier. You would write your own episode of one of those shows. You would send it to a showrunner of a new sitcom, along with your own sitcom pilot to show your ‘voice’. But your main task was to demonstrate you can write in the voice of existing characters on an existing show. They might hire you to work on their show, writing for their characters, starting at the very bottom.

If I hadn’t loved England so much, I would have moved to Los Angeles in around 2001 and hawked around some spec scripts in an attempt to get work. That was the way in. Pilot season in the US would mean literally dozens of shows would be going into production and needing a writing staff. People like me.

As it was, things were going okay for me here in the UK. I was getting plenty of work on BBC Radio 4, and making inroads in television. Soon I was writing episodes of existing shows, like My Hero. I wrote six of those. I also wrote an episode of My Familywhich happened to air the same night as the last ever episode of Friends. That was 28^thMay 2004. Perhaps that was the high watermark of those sitcoms. Frasier also ended in 2004. Seinfeld had finished in 1998. Two and a Half Men in 2003. There were shows like The Big Bang Theory still to come but did any hit the heights of Friends, Seinfeld and Frasier?

Getting Gritty

Something had changed. Maybe it was 9/11. Everyone was talking about exciting gritty new shows like The Wire, The West Wing, 24 and The Sopranos. Everything became much more serious. Comedy continued, but it was more muted. The studio sitcom, the mainstay of comedy for decades, was out. ‘Single-camera’ shows, ie. shows without a studio audience, became the norm: The Office which gave birth to Parks and Recreation. There was also Modern Family, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, My Name is Earl and so on. In the UK, there was The Inbetweeners, Peep Show, Outnumbered, Green Wing, The Thick of It.

Miranda, a mainstream studio sitcom during this period, was an outlier, which perhaps explains why it was so wildly popular.

Then streaming changed it all over again. Everything fragmented. Finance got complicated. And we all had cameras in our phones and suddenly you could make your own stuff and put it up on YouTube. And where does that leave the wannabe sitcom writer? What are the ways in?

Find out by reading the rest:

What are you doing Tuesday night? Fancy having a chat about the Ten Commandments?

That’s for Loyal Lollards (paid subscribers) at the slightly later time of 8.30pm UK on Tuesday 25th August. Care to join?

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And here’s something on the Ninth Commandment to get you thinking:

Lies, Damned Lies and Quotes by Churchill

Isn’t that a great quotation? You’ve probably heard it before, perhaps in a sermon. It may have been attributed to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill. These two men, known for their wit, are the favourite repositories of various bon mots from the last few centuries.

In fact, this line was used in a sermon by CH Spurgeon in 1855, when Mark Twain was only twenty and Churchill had not yet been born. Spurgeon did not claim it for himself.

The origin of the line probably derives from words by Jonathan Swift written in The Examiner in 1710:

“… it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

Why labour the origin story of this quotation? What does it matter? Firstly, the quote itself is about the toxic power of lying which helping us understand the Ninth Commandment. And we know this to be true. People are eager to believe the worst of people, and gossip spreads so much faster than a good report.

Secondly, it is worth considering why speakers and preachers reach so readily for quotations they find on the internet and use without checking, recycling misinformation. There are a variety of motives for attributing that original quotation to Mark Twain or Churchill. One is ignorance of the fact that the quotes you hear from others are often not accurate or properly attributed.

Another is that these quotes often sound so good, and make the point so well and come from highly regarded sources. In short, they are “too good to check”. That’s a phrase I’ve heard from journalistic circles which describes the reluctance of a news source to verify something juicy and newsworthy in case it turns out not to be true.

These quotations also give the speaker or preacher an air of authority, derived from the much-lauded Twain or Churchill. But it is stolen authority. This is, perhaps, why this commandment comes after the commandment not to steal. Lying is often stealthy in that it is hard to disprove, especially if the lie fits a prevailing narrative. We might say something is “directionally true” rather than “objectively true”, or that it “resonates”. Or we say “there’s no smoke without fire”, imagining that people would not be making these claims about someone if there were not something to them.

But the ninth commandment tells us not to give false testimony:

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

Exodus 20:16

This is not just a prohibition of gossip, lies and slander. It is also a prohibition of flattery, which is equally deceptive. This may be in order to ingratiate ourselves into a group which provides influence or security. There’s always a reason to lie or flatter.

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I’m still pushing on with my book, Field Notes from a Sitcom Writer. More on that below, along with details of my two-day workshop on writing sitcoms. And a very silly joke from God, the Bible and Everything (in 60 minutes).

But first, the headlines:

Man Formerly Known as “Legion” Cancelled Following Pronoun Change from They/Them to He/Him

A man formerly known as “Legion” has faced vicious criticism after abandoning the pronouns ‘they/them’ and asking to be referred to as ‘he/him’.

“Everyone was perfectly happy when I was living naked among the tombs, smashing chains, screaming through the night and cutting myself with stones,” the man told The Wycliffe Papers. “But the moment I meet Jesus, lose all those demons, stop talking in the first person plural and adopt a cis-normative singular identity, I’m suddenly the problem. I was Legion. We were many. But not any more. Why is that so hard for people to accept?”

No Consultation

Some troubled by this extremely rapid identity realignment have accused Jesus of imposing a singular identity without a consultation or transition period. The man rejected the criticism, pointing out that “Legion” had never been his name in the first place and that he was grateful to recover his original voice.

Residents have since asked Jesus to leave the region, insisting this had nothing to do with the loss of two thousand pigs and everything to do with maintaining community cohesion. The man formerly known as Legion has been told to go home and tell everyone what the Lord has done for him—a decision critics condemned as “giving him a platform”.

Meanwhile, according to Mark, Jesus has moved on to change the identity of a girl, thought to be only 12 years old, from being ‘dead’ to ‘alive’. Authorities are set to launch a full investigation.

One from the archives:

Is God About to Introduce a New Character?

Speculation is rising after the Creator of heaven and earth declared it “not good for man to be alone.” Fresh data confirms male loneliness has surged 100%—a record high, though demographers admit records only began yesterday. The Wycliffe Papers questions which animal might qualify as a suitable helper, with bookmakers installing the newly named “dog” as the 8/15 favourite.

Access the full archive by becoming a paid subscriber AKA a Loyal Lollard:

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Oh, and one more joke here:

Wanna have a crack at writing a sitcom?

What if you could spend two whole days in a real writers’ room? Sitting around generating ideas, pitching stories, breaking them into plots and shaping a pilot from the ground up?

Sounds like a dream? It could be a reality.

Join me and a small group of fellow writers in North London on 11th-12th September for From Premise to Pilot: an intensive, practical two-day workshop designed to get you thinking, pitching and writing like a proper TV comedy writers’ room.

Places are limited, so book now to secure yours:

Booking info

Amusing Ourselves Back to Life?

Int. Office. Home. Thursday 5^th March 2026. 10.35am

This time yesterday, I was getting on the London Underground to go to a meeting. I used to live in London, moving there soon after leaving university in 1997. It was the only place for me to live as someone who wanted to be a comedy writer. That’s where all the comedy was. The whole comedy industry then decamped to Edinburgh in August for the Festival Fringe, where comedians showed their hilarious wares. (Been there. Done that. One for another time.)

You had to put on an Edinburgh Fringe show because you really couldn’t make your own stuff. Cameras were expensive. Even cheap cameras were expensive. And even if you had access to professional cameras and editing equipment, you couldn’t post anything online because there was no online. Not really. No broadband internet. Video was something you watched in your living room on a broadcast TV, video or a DVD player. Tablets only existed in the world of Star Trek.

The Crackberry

The most advanced piece of tech back when I left university was the Blackberry. Remember those? The very first one came out in 1999. That was the Blackberry 850. (Why not just The Blackberry? Or The Blackberry 1? Tech companies are terrible at naming products.) By 2010, the Blackberry controlled 50% of that market. The luxury iPhone, released in 2007, was declared dead on arrival because it didn’t come with a physical keyboard, unlike the Blackberry. And the rest is history.

Side note: Blackberries were also known as Crackberries, since they were highly addictive. The warning signs about smartphones were all there…

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Thanks for reading The Wycliffe Papers!

This week, I wrote an opinion piece for Premier Christianity:

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Where were we? Oh yes. We’re still in the Ten Commandments. We’re on the eighth:

You shall not steal.

Exodus 20:15

When Honesty Costs You £36

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul. Conduct yourselves with such honour among the Gentiles that, though they slander you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us.

1 Peter 2:8b-12

Car dealerships can make people nervous. You can feel like you’re walking into a lion’s den in which you are helpless to fight off the experienced salesman who will persuade you to spend more money than you intended. But a lot of their work is done for them since the cars are so well presented. They are all brand new, shiny and come with all of the extras. The salesman knows that if they can persuade you to take a seat in a car, they’re halfway to making the sale. If they can get you to take a test drive, the car will sell itself.

God’s people were to be his glorious showroom to the nations who would encounter Israelite society and be sold on their God. The Lord is explicit about this back in Genesis 12 where he makes a promise to Abraham that he would make him and his descendants a great nation and that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Centuries later, Peter picks up this theme in his letter to God’s people scattered among the nations. They are to be shining examples of humanity, abstaining from the desires of the flesh, honouring each other and living such good lives that God would be glorified by the Gentiles.

But this is not just about individual conduct and self-discipline. God’s people are to be a holy nation. How the Israelites behave towards each other, then, is of critical importance. Will their lives and their society reflect the character and nature of their God? We’ve already seen this in the fourth commandment about the Sabbath, which is for the entire household as well as the foreigner in their midst. The fifth commandment is about intergenerational respect. The sixth is about the preservation of life, and the seventh about protecting marriages and households.

These next two commandments – about theft and lying – are a continuation of this mission. Both commands relate to our neighbour, not to steal from them or to bear false testimony about or against them. They are very practical, albeit brief. But the words themselves are loaded with meaning.

The Stealthy Ways We Steal

The sense of the key word in the eighth commandment is not so much the idea of ‘theft’ but ‘stealth’. The prohibition is about the taking of anything ‘by stealth’ from which we get the word ‘steal’. It is the underhand sneaking around that seems to be the issue here. Brazen armed robbery is clearly wrong and is, of course, not allowed either. But the Lord knows that his people are much more likely to try and rob each other much more sneakily.

Martin Luther’s commentary on this command focusses on the deceptions of the marketplace, which he describes as a “carrion pit of extortion and a den of robbery where the poor are daily overcharged, new burdens and high prices are imposed and everyone uses the market according to his caprice”. Theft is so common here, he writes, that if all thieves were hanged, there would not be enough hangmen to execute them all. No-one ever accused Martin Luther of understatement.

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See below for details of a two-day workshop I’m running in September in London if you’re interested in getting experience writing a sitcom and working in a writers’ room.

But first, the headlines:

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I’ve been at the Keswick Unconventional all week - but our series in the Ten Commandments goes on. Here’s the Sixth Commandment:

You shall not murder

“And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. I will demand an accounting from anyone who takes the life of his fellow man:

Wh…

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Bible Study research figures REVEALED

Research due to be released tomorrow show the average Bible study spends on average 36% of time on snacks and marvelling at a cake or pudding someone has made, and 27% on “Catching Up” and then 19% of the time thinking about an introductory que…

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The First Commandment calls us to find freedom by giving Christ our exclusive allegiance, allowing him to expose and displace our hidden idols, and learning to love what he loves.

The Second Commandment calls us to receive God as he reveals himself, respond to his jealou…

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We’re still on holiday here at The Wycliffe Papers, but don’t worry, fresh jokes and headlines are coming very soon.

In the meantime, here’s some from the archive from around this time last year:

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We’re onto the Fifth Commandment ahead of the Zoom chat on Wednesday next week. Details for Loyal Lollards (paid subscribers) at the bottom. Become a paid subscriber here and join in:

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Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus 20:12)

Every parent is warned. This stage is coming. The cute baby becomes the tottering toddler who, in turn, becomes the Spanish Inquisition. The questions never stop. Looking at the world around them and trying to make sense of it, they just keep asking questions. Why is daddy taller than mummy? Why is this carrot orange? Why is the sun in the sky? Why can’t I touch that hot thing? Why will it hurt? No matter how much you try to explain what they are seeing and feeling and asking, the next question comes: “why?”

As you fold laundry, feed the cat and mop the floor, the questions keep coming until you break. There seems to be no way you can answer each question without prompting the next devastating follow-up question: “why?” Again and again the question comes until the parent cracks and resorts to the answer which feels like cheating: “because I say so”.

At the risk of sounding like a small child, I’m going to ask the question: “Why does it feel like cheating?” Why does “because I say so” feel like a last resort?

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The Wycliffe Papers is in on a summer break. Here are some headlines from the archive:

God’s declaration that all He has made is ‘very good’ prompts calls for independent assessment.

“It’s all very well God saying that what he’s made is ‘good’, whatever that means,” said a snake speaking with The Wycliffe Papers in front a truly glorious sunset. “But does…

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We’re still on the Ten Commandments ahead of the Zoom chat on 29th July for Loyal Lollards (paid subscribers). Join the club!

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Here’s the Third Commandment:

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who takes His name in vain.

I used to live near the Hammersmith Apollo, a large concert venue where I have watched shows by Eddie Izzard, Peter Kay, Milton Jones (supported by a young James Acaster) and, with my daughter, The Wiggles. The Apollo was built in 1932 and originally called The Gaumont Palace. It was known as the Hammersmith Apollo from 1962 until 1993 when its name was changed to ‘The Labatt’s Apollo’. You can probably guess why. A Canadian beer company, called Labatt’s, poured money into a major refurbishment and bought the right to name the venue. That right was then purchased by Carling, HMV and, most recently, Eventim. It’s always struck locals as sad that the name of their concert venue should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Ultimately, everyone still calls it ‘The Hammersmith Apollo’.

Some names are not just unwanted but hurtful. It used to be said in playgrounds that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”. I’ve never been convinced by this epigram, not least because there are names that can wound you far more deeply than a smack or a punch. A bruise from a playground scuffle turns various colours on your skin and then goes away. A phrase that is taunted in your face or written on notes might stay with you for the rest of your life. Decades later, you may meet someone from that playground and you hope that they don’t recall that name or, at least, pretend to have forgotten.

Why does that name hurt so much? Normally, because it is based on something true. It may be a reference to something embarrassing that you did or said. It may be related to your appearance, or an uncharitable variation on your real name. The misuse of your name is extremely hurtful. Why?

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We’re into a season of the Ten Commandments, with the next two Zooms talking them through. If you want to be part of that, do upgrade to paid which, in turn, supports much of my online activity.

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I wrote about the First Commandment over at Cary’s Almanac.

Here’s the Second Commandment

You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in the heavens above, on the earth below, or in the waters beneath. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving devotion to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)

The Graven Image

Queen Elizabeth the Second sat for many portraits in her life. Almost all of them, when finished and unveiled, were controversial. The image would be praised by some, or branded an abomination by others. Those that knew the Queen would say that picture did not do her justice.

The canvas of one portrait by Justin Mortimer in 1998 was mostly taken up with yellow paint. He presented an odd version of the Queen based on Polaroid photographs. “Silly artist cuts off the Queen’s head,” said a headline from theDaily Mail. The next portrait by Lucian Freud three years later was described by the Daily Telegraph as “thought provoking” but “extremely unflattering”.

The problem the portrait painter faces is the task of capturing a person in one image. The sculptor’s task is hardly any easier. The work can only capture one aspect of the subject’s character. Everyone, but especially the monarch, has to be many things to many people. When it comes down to it, the portrait says an awful lot about the artist and the spirit of the age, and very little about the person being depicted.

So how does one represent the Lord in an image or a statue? The answer should be a relief to us: don’t. Even if you intend to worship the Lord who revealed himself to Moses, do not attempt to render him as anything in creation. Why not?

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So we have some headlines from this time last year! Here are the headline…

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I’ve been thinking and writing about the Ten Commandments for a while. These throughts will be a book at some point - which Loyal Lollards will receive for free.

It also means that I have plenty of thoughts for some forthcoming Zoom chats in which we’re going back to the Bible. Here are the dates for your diaries:

The first table - commandments 1-5 - on Wednesday 29th July at 8pm.

The second table - commandments 6-10 - on Tuesday 25th August at the slightly different 8.30pm (rather than 8pm) which might make things easier for some. Who knows? Good to try different days of the week and times.

And here’s the first bit to get us going:

How Is All the Floundering Going?

Be proactive. If you want to be effective, take control of your feelings and reactions. Then take the initiative. Respond positively and improve the situation.

It’s not terribly inspiring advice, is it? But Stephen Covey thought it was important enough to be the first commandment on his list. Having reached the age of 57, Covey had accrued some wisdom on how to make an impact in life. But even he would have been startled by his own effectiveness. Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, published in 1989, has sold over 40 million copies, becoming one of the best-selling works of non-fiction in history. It has even outsold How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, published in 1936 whose first piece of advice is “Don’t criticise, condemn or complain”.

How about “Stand up straight with your shoulders back”? Is that good advice? It’s about self-respect and, again, being proactive. This is the first of Twelve Rules for Life: an antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson, published in 2018. It sold at least ten million copies in five years.

All of these successful books are lists of clear commands. Peterson has twelve rules. Covey has seven highly-suggested habits. Carnegie has thirty principles. The format is based on the original list of commandments: the Ten Commandments, a list that used to be deemed so important that they can be seen on the walls of churches all over the world.

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