I didn’t expect it, but this last couple of months have been amongst my busiest. Some very rich people are finding time to think. Read more ›

I have spent a couple of months looking after old monks. It may surprise you to know that some of these holy old men are smelly, scruffy and sweary – just like their secular brothers. Read more ›

Years and years ago I left a monastic community as a young man. Now, I return as a middle-aged one, and I’m still one of the youngsters. This time, though I am doing the caring. Read more ›

I am back in my hill-top cell, and very much enjoying the increasing loneliness. I read and write a lot and am aware of the luxury of my circumstances. Oddly, amongst bigger differences, my life has one or two similarities to the way the Prince of Wales lives. Read more ›

I have the yacht to myself. I shall use the time to remember Thomas Merton, it being close to the 40th anniversary of his death. Read more ›

A bright young correspondent has chided me for being a touch frivolous. Aren’t I selling myself short, he asks? Tapping this out in the main saloon of an oligarch’s yacht, for it to be winged off by satellite, I am in good condition to reflect ruefully on these remarks. Read more ›

Lots of people have been e-mailing me for advice about surviving a recession. Indeed, it’s an interesting question. I have often said how lucky people are to be well-off and in a world with rising expectations. What’s my message for a world of falling expectations? Read more ›

The good news is that I am more often being asked for spiritual guidance than for business guidance. After all, our hearts matter more than our wallets. Still, various bad things flow from this crunch, meltdown, recession – whatever. For a start, I shan’t make as much money. Besides, before the impending recession, people didn’t come to me because they were deeply, deeply fearful. Now they do. Read more ›

A memoir by novelist A M Homes, a documentary on coroner Shiya Ribowsky and the disinterment of anglo-Catholic Cardinal Newman have combined to make me ponder the business of our connection with the remains of the dead. What’s odd is that modern technology seems to make us more medieval than ever. Read more ›

How delicious that Damien Hirst has cleaned up even as the media tell us that it’s all up for over-weaning capitalist thugs – his customers. What’s truly miraculous is that the art magnate and entrepreneur manages to come across as cheerfully demotic and populist as he rakes in the lucre. What we sense, of course, is that Hirst’s work is an essay in shock-value. He plays games with what offends us and the value we will place on things. Skulls and diamonds, and stuffed calves and gold leaf, are the ideal art objects for a period of capitalist hiatus. These bad times are perfect times for Hirst’s art and its value. Read more ›