Reviews July/August 2024

03/07/2024 | Reform

Muslim limbo

ShaydaDirected by Noora NiasariCertificate 15, 117 minutesReleased 19 July

An Iranian woman, Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi from Holy Spider), is staying with her young daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) in a woman’s refuge house in Brisbane run by Joyce … Read More

Editorial: Politics

03/07/2024 | Reform

I remember as a child in the 1970s, sitting unstrapped in the back seat of the car, with the radio playing the Today programme, asking my mum what the government was. She said it was a man who runs a … Read More

Do stay for tea and coffee: ‘We were sitting in our garden when the sound of guitar-led hymns wafted over the fence’

03/07/2024 | Reform

Paul Kerensa is living the outdoor life

The sun is high and the weather is… well, it’s British summertime, so I wouldn’t be so bold as to guess. But perhaps this time of year, the outside world beckons a little … Read More

On the pilgrim way: ‘A nightingale, its beak wide open, sang its long, complicated and beautiful song’

03/07/2024 | Reform

Sheila Maxey shares holiday photographs

This summer season seems the time for travellers’ tales and photos, and the internet means I am included. A granddaughter and her boyfriend, aged 19, are in southeast Asia for two months. They seem to … Read More

In search of Island Chapels

03/06/2024 | Reform

David Gleed explores the spiritual draw of remote islands

Out there, on the horizon, islands beckon, they always do, even on seemingly uninviting, wet, murky days. There’s something mysterious and enchanting about an island, something to be discovered… And getting … Read More

Art in Focus: June 2024

03/06/2024 | Reform

CaravaggioThe Seven Works of Mercy, 1606Oil on canvasNaples, Pio Monte della Misericordia

In an early episode of the Netflix series Ripley, Tom Ripley gazes enigmatically at Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy. The painting was commissioned as an altarpiece by an … Read More