Tag Archives: Pilgrim’s Progress

Baptist Church House

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image

 

This is an impressive picture taken on 13 May 2014 outside Baptist Church House on Southampton Row, kindly passed on by Jane Giscombe and Alan Argent (Dr Williams’s Library) to Bunyan lovers, and reproduced here with their permission.

You can see closer photographs of Bunyan statue by Richard Garbe on the Victorian Web page, and visit English Heritage for the building. 

First performance of new work based on The Pilgrim’s Progress

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Cliff Falling by Simon Rackham

Cliff Falling by Simon Rackham

‘On Sunday 23rd March 2014, members of Bedford School, Bedford Girls’ School and Pilgrim’s Pre-Preparatory School will be joining forces with professional vocal ensemble VOCES8 and the Phoenix Orchestra to present the first performance of a specially commissioned work ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ composed and directed by Harvey Brough.

The work was commissioned with generous support from the Bedford School Trust; with a specially written libretto by James Runcie, it re-tells the classic allegorical story of Bunyan’s hero ‘Christian’ as he makes his journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City’

The first performance of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ will take place on Sunday 23rd March 2014 at 7.30pm in the Great Hall, Bedford School. Tickets, priced £8 (£4 students) are available from the Bedford School Music Box Office Tel : 01234 362254, Email : rielden@bedfordschool.org.uk

For more information download the leaflet here .

A walking tour…

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By Roger Pooley

‘whereas Christian goes on a pilgrimage, Christiana goes on a walking-tour’

This quotation was posted on Facebook by Jameela Lares, with a plea to get the source of it to her before she taught The Pilgrim’s Progress that morning. I’m sorry that it’s taken me rather longer than that, other than a vague memory, but I thought other members of the Society might like to know the results.

It comes from ‘The Identity of the Pseudo-Bunyan’ in Ronald Knox, Essays in Satire (London, 1928: Sheed & Ward), on p.206. The essay is one of a number of satires on biblical source criticism and other ‘modern’ theological ideas of the time – the volume also contains a poem in the manner of Dryden, ‘Absolute and Abitofhell’. The essay itself invents a number of Bunyanesque pseudo-scholars: among them Professor Sack-the-lot, Mr Tithe-mint, and my personal favourite, Canon Obvious, the author of Dear Old Bunyan. The quotation in question is actually ascribed to Mr Muck-rake’s On the Trail of the Pilgrims, as the climax to a whole series of inconsistencies that he has pointed out between Parts One and Two.
The conclusion, after a discussion of the differences between the two parts which (ironies aside) is still worth attending to, is too magnificent not to quote at length. He draws attention to Great-heart’s ‘panegyric upon women’ where:
‘he traces the influence of women in the Gospels with the avowed object of showing that they were ahead of the other sex from end to end of the story. It is my own belief, though one which I offer with all due reserve to the public, that this is the true reading of the problem. The fortunes of Christiana, strange as it may seem, were foisted upon the world by a woman, jealous for the credit of her own sex, and an Anglican, equally jealous for the reputation of a much-maligned and recently persecuted Church.’ (p.219)