Berlin, Germany
Joined April 2009
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My latest article, on George Bell's eulogy for Dietrich Bonhoeffer is now out in @EcclesHistSoc Studies in Church History ! It's open access (ooo free to read) and has a transcript of the full eulogy at the end to hopefully help others us it in future.
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Interesting to see the Free Speech Union come out in support of Dickens' anti-Semitism. Personally I find his anti-Semitism a prejudice that can cause great offence today, but clearly the FSU view it in a more positive light.
Charles Dickens Museum condemns his “prejudice” as staff are warned that his views could “cause great offence today”.
Internal guidance at the council-run Guildhall Museum in Rochester has been issued to staff to combat Dickens’s “particularly upsetting” views.
The museum dedicated to the life of the author of Great Expectations celebrates his work but has sought to distance itself from his views on race and the British Empire.
The guidance states: “Today we reject his views, but even at the time, there were a number of important figures who argued for the universal worth of all people and cultures, regardless of race or background. We have to acknowledge that Dickens did not think like this.”
In 2025, The Telegraph revealed that the birthplace of William Shakespeare was to be “decolonised” after concerns were raised that the playwright was being used to promote “white supremacy”.
What absolute madness.
Dickens' himself tried to make amends from his anti-Semitism later in life after a Jewish women wrote to him to say how offensive it was in Oliver Twist and how it hurt British Jews. So Dickens could recognise a prejudice that caused great offence.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
Starmer's position is that Olly Robbins behaved appallingly for not blocking his decision to appoint Mandelson US amb after it had been announced, blessed by the King and agreed by the US in time for the inauguration—as requested by No 10—because of security risks the Foreign Office deemed manageable.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
Considering the last week, a room full of millionaires mocking a working class caretaker with Tourette’s is not a good look. It is not brave. It is not edgy. It is punching down at a disabled man who cannot control his neurological condition. After everything he has endured, that is not comedy. It is cruelty dressed up as it. – at Woodhouselee, Scotland
Someone's going to have a heart attack when they next hear one of the Psalms read in church....
When I go to Church, it is a powerful, personal and vulnerable time where I lay everything at God's feet
Church is a sanctuary where the desperate, weary and hopeless go to find comfort and meaning
Imagine someone heartbroken, lost, and afraid seeking sanctuary and being surrounded by gawdy graffiti questioning God's existence?
What a cruel and senseless way to treat a believer
Sometimes it feels like The Church of England hates its own flock 😭
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
So you're saying that although doctors make fatal mistakes, we should allow them to actively kill patients?
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
Today the Observer has published an extraordinary piece, which I think they view as a romantic case for assisted dying, but which is, in fact, a textbook case of how doctors subvert the rules to help patients without any terminal illness whatsoever to die by suicide.
It could not highlight more starkly the dangers of the law we are currently debating.
In the piece, doctors in New South Wales (whose AD law is very similar to our proposed one) collude with two elderly people with no terminal diagnoses to end their lives.
One person has generative spinal discs, her husband has panic attacks. They are both very old and wish to die,
No terminal condition. No expectation of death within 6 months.
Yet they found two doctors only too happy to sign off their double suicide & prescribe the lethal drugs.
We may all yearn to “slip away in a room full of love” at the end of our lives - I know I do - but enabling state sponsored suicide under the guise of assisted dying couldn’t be more obviously dangerous.
The Observer has just revealed how an apparently safe law in Australia is really used, in the real world, to enable suicide. The doctors were entirely happy to ignore the “terminal illness with 6 months or less to live” requirement. And the family of the dead couple are so confident this is all OK that they wrote about it in a UK newspaper.
It’s dystopian, dishonest & so deeply worrying.
Please let’s not sleepwalk into this in the UK.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
Anneliese Dodds MP (@AnnelieseDodds): In the Netherlands in 2010, there were two cases of assisted dying for psychiatric suffering, in 2023 there were 138... The slippery slope is real.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
Amendment defeated 279 v 243. Looks like there will be no hospice, nor care home, where you can be certain ending the life of the terminally ill will not be suggested nor normalised.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
‘Finally, “O God, our help in ages past” was sung — a rare experience, never to be forgotten. The six hundred men who govern England lifted the tune to the roof.’
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
A recurring phenomenon of pro-bill MPs saying they’ll table significant amendments and then never getting round to it.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
The most consequential act of any Labour Government, arguably of any Government - undone by a private members bill and an MP elected in 2021. Heart feels so very heavy that this is how it has been done.
@DArcyTiP @HansardSociety spotted it would have to happen. Now it has.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
Brain blown. The government and Kim Leadbeater keep saying don’t put things on face of bill, rely instead on codes of practice. But the Committee has just voted to say that nobody (doctors etc) has to comply with those codes of practice. It’s all to be discretionary.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
This is what Kim Leadbeater thinks “Parliament at its best” is—forcing out a disabled MP through attrition.
Dan Cruickshank retweeted
I apologised to the members of the Assisted Dying Bill committee tonight as I had to leave early.
I didn’t want to but had to because my hearing aids need to recharge after 15 hours use and without them I cannot hear or take part in the committee.
Hearing isn’t a choice for me.
I’ve raised this issue repeatedly with members of the committee and it’s sad that I’m unable to continue today.
I have chosen to give up a lot, especially during Ramadan, to make sure I can contribute in this committee and in politics.
I wanted to stay as long as I could for these hugely important discussions and it is frustrating that I cannot because of my disability.