Fifteen years ago, I was sent by the Economist magazine Intelligent Life to interview a Benedictine nun, Dame Joanna Jamieson. She was 73, and had spent 51 years in an enclosed community. After serving a double term as Abbess, she was spending a sabbatical year studying at an art school in Shoreditch. Like an intergalactic time traveller who had suddenly pitched up in the 21st century, she had never heard a Beatles song or seen a James Bond film, let alone experienced modern city life in all its brutishness and cacophony. But she was unfazed – bright, decisive, charming.Dame Joanna belonged to the community at Stanbrook Abbey, that has been, down the centuries, a magnet for talented religious women. And in “Enclosed nuns with unenclosed minds” Lucy Beckett traces the history of Stanbrook, the oldest community of Benedictine nuns in England, which, this Christmas, is celebrating the 400th anniversary of their nine brave foundresses receiving the habit from the prince-bishop of Cambrai in Flanders, then part of the Spanish Netherlands. This is a tale of courage in the face of anti-Catholic prejudice, imprisonment, distinguished scholasticism, liturgical music and fine printing, not to mention West End fame, and a move from Worcestershire to Wass in the North York Moors.
Our leader [Rishi Sunak] deplores the British government’s lack of joined-up thinking over immigration policy. The net immigration figure for 2022 rose to a record level of three quarters of a million, and in response to this the government has introduced laws designed to reduce net immigration by around 300,000 per annum. It intends, for instance, to raise the minimum income required for a British resident who wishes to be joined by a foreign partner or close family member from £18,600 a year to £38,700 – around £4,000 above the average UK salary. The government should honestly admit that the common good requires younger immigrants to maintain the balance between the generations. It does not need spasmodic initiatives in reaction to the latest scary headlines.
In the third of our Advent series on Christmas behind bars, Holly Westwood (not her real name), who is five years into a prison sentence, tries to inject colour and cheer into her grey surroundings. A mother of two, she reflects on how phone calls to her children over Christmas are a “double-edged sword” – hearing her loved ones, but knowing she can’t be with them. “For mums separated from their kids, the heartache is unimaginable.”
In looking for the roots of conflict in the Middle East, both sides have the same, handy villain to blame: imperial Britain pursuing its own purposes. Before Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, it had already promised that Palestine would be included in an independent Arab state. But the Balfour Declaration also set out Britain’s commitment to use its best endeavours to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. These facts are interpreted by each side to promote its own story. As John McHugh argues in “What happened in Palestine”, until both Israel and Palestine understand the legitimate rights of the other, peace cannot be reached.
Caption to picture at top of page: Some of the nuns, past and present, from the enclosed community of Carmelite Sisters in Dumbarton. Picture by Bill Heaney
- The Tablet is available in most newsagents and from the bookstall some Christian churches.