BBC audio

Pepinster – 02 May 25

McDonald- 01 May 25

Fraser – 30 Apr 25

Smith – 29 Apr 25

Wilkinson – 28 Apr 25

Pepinster – 26 Apr 25

Marshall – 25 Apr 25

McDonald – 24 Apr 25

Tilby – 23 Apr 25

Nichols – 22 Apr 25

Smith – 21 Apr 25

Hurley – 19 Apr 25

Winkett – 18 Apr 25

Tilby – 17 Apr 25

Wells – 16 Apr 25

Walker – 15 Apr 25

Singh – 14 Apr 25

Pepinster – 12 Apr 25

11 Apr 25 — Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis

On this day, twenty-five years ago, a defining legal battle reached its conclusion in a London courtroom. The libel trial between Holocaust denier David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt, alongside her publisher, Penguin Books, was not just a dispute between two sides. It was a battle between truth and falsehood; between history and its deliberate distortion. In the trial, the defence showed how Irving had intentionally manipulated facts to fit his agenda of diminishing Holocaust crimes. After several months of interrogating the evidence, Justice Charles Gray ‘s judgment was unequivocal: Irving was a falsifier of history. A Holocaust denier. A propagandist for antisemitism. This was not just a victory in the fight against anti-Jewish hatred. It was a victory for all who cherish truth. Because history, when rewritten in order to deceive, leads to moral blindness. And moral blindness leads to injustice, oppression, and ultimately, tragedy. Today, when one needs no more than a social media account and some home recording equipment to become a global influencer, the distortion of truth once again threatens to shape reality. The festival of Passover, which begins this weekend, has at its heart the antidote to the scourge of falsehood. Passover is our festival of questions. For more than three millennia, on this festival, we have recounted the famous story of the Israelite exodus from Egyptian slavery. But not by lecture or sermon. Instead, every facet of the Passover meal is designed to provoke questions. We eat unusual foods, sing unusual songs and, at the heart of it all, we pose the piercing, recurring questions: “For what purpose?” “Why?” It is a sacred task to ask, probe and explore, with the utmost integrity. Not simply to accept things as read. To question is not necessarily to reject or to undermine. Rather, it is seen by our intensely discursive tradition as a way of refining our understanding and uncovering the truth. The Nobel Laureate, Israel Rabi, explained how his mother had made him a brilliant scientist: “After school, every other mother would ask her child: ‘So? Did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. ‘Isi,’ she would say, ‘Did you ask a good question today?’”. Passover inspires us not only to retell our story, but also to relearn how to ask. Let us all honour the courage of those who, like Deborah Lipstadt, examine evidence, test assumptions, and refuse to let truth be silenced. Because in every generation, truth must be defended. And the surest path to it begins with a question.

10 Apr 25 — Canon Angela Tilby

This week marks twenty years since Prince Charles married Camilla Parker-Bowles at Windsor Guildhall. The civil ceremony was followed by a service of prayer and dedication in St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. I remember watching on television, not quite knowing what to make of it. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams seemed a bit hesitant, a bit uneasy as he conducted the service. With millions of others I couldn’t get out of my mind the tragedy of Princess Diana’s death in 1997 and the massive outpouring of grief at her funeral. But by the spring of 2005 more people were prepared to shrug and accept what was going on. And that was not all due to good PR. Over time the public became used to the idea and it has become more and more obvious that the now King has a genuine partnership with Camilla which has lasted fifty years. Throughout history royal and high-class marriages have often been arranged to firm up alliances, or keep assets within royal or aristocratic circles. In the theology of the Middle Ages, marriage was a kind of contract, a way of ordering society and holding lust in check. Marriages took place in the Church porch, as if they were half worldly and pragmatic, half holy. In the first English Prayer Book of 1549 a more positive view was stated. The ceremony was brought into the body of the Church and was now accompanied by a compulsory little sermon on why God had ordained marriage. Three reasons were given: first to provide for the procreation of children and to ensure they were brought up in the fear of the Lord, second, for the avoidance of the sin of fornication – sex outside marriage. But then Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who drafted the new service, added something quite new. ‘Marriage was instituted for the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity’. Cranmer also added the words ‘to love and to cherish’ to the marriage vows. The historian Dairmaid McCulloch, suggests that we owe those additions to Cranmer’s own happy experience of marriage. It is all too easy to marry for the wrong reasons. The important question for those couples contemplating marriage is whether they really like each other, whether they are prepared to stand by each other and help each other to be strong and resilient. As I look back twenty years to that rather tentative ceremony in St George’s chapel it seems to me that Charles and Camilla’s lasting friendship has been a blessing, both to themselves and perhaps to the rest of us too.