The Bradford Literature Festival is running at the moment. Certainly this year’s offering is perceptibly superior to previous years, and for the first time today I felt motivated to go along to one of the events. The well-known historian of religion Karen Armstrong was speaking about her recent book, The Lost Art of Scripture. She really does have an impressive range of reference, and is knowledgable about Christianity and Judaism (which I expected) but also about Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. It was nice to have all my theological inclinations supported!
I suppose that I was not expecting that she would be talking about “art” in the context in which I normally use the term, but it did remind me that, impressive and attractive as the programme is, the festival doesn’t offer us any speakers who write about the visual arts. Some badgering of the committee for next year would seem to be in order.