James Jeffrey is an editor for the Catholic Herald, a writer and a Camino guide.
From our UK edition
Britain’s greatest war poet Siegfried Sassoon was well aware of the idiocy of those who cheered the deaths of soldiers. ‘O German mother dreaming by the fire/ While you are knitting socks to send your son/ His face is trodden deeper in the mud,’ he wrote in his World War I poem Glory of Women. His verse
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I’ve long been drawn to sketchiness. In the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, I always preferred the dodgy and slightly dangerous old-town Piazza area to the trendy and sanitised Bole area next to the international airport. But even by my sketchy-embracing standards, it was hard not to find the grim state of Athens deflating. After all,
What happened to the all-embracing, welcoming spirit emanating from the Electric Forest?
From our UK edition
Those looking for ancient culture will find it in abundance on Fuerteventura – a canary island known more for its beaches than its heritage. I’d ended up in a hostel run by an Italian couple deep in the island’s outback. Looming over the hostel was the holy mountain of Tindaya, on whose summit indigenous islanders once left
Staten Island offers the spiritual antonym to elitist performances such as the Met Gala and the Oscars that peddle a distortion of American life
From our UK edition
I never realised Lanzarote was such a weird place. During an extended Camino de Santiago pilgrimage to escape UK lockdowns, various pilgrims I met urged me to visit the splendours of the Canary Islands as a natural sequel to the splendours of the Iberian Peninsula we traversed. But Lanzarote was rarely mentioned. As soon as
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There have been stunning developments recently in Ethiopia’s grinding conflict between the national government and Tigrayan rebels in the north. Last November, the news was all about the government’s invasion of the Tigray region by federal forces. When the government claimed victory after capturing the regional capital Mekelle, Tigray was firmly on the ropes and
I wouldn’t envy anyone fighting in that terrain against a tenacious, vigorous people defending their beloved homeland
From our UK edition
The sweet salvation of the summer recess over, we returned to Sandhurst for our final term of officer training. It was 11 September, 2001 – a day that started with a hike in the sunshine and which came to define my time in the British Army. The events of 9/11 would lead to my own deployment
The Camino de Santiago is no normal pilgrimage
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Ex-veterans minister Johnny Mercer appears to have launched a one-man frontal assault on the UK government. Rarely a day goes by when he isn’t voraciously criticising their shoddy treatment of veterans. Speaking as a veteran and ex-British Army officer like Mercer, I can’t say I blame him. One tour of Afghanistan was enough to break
From our UK edition
My trek along the entire length of Portugal began on a small boat with Captain Juan standing beside the outboard. Accompanied by five other rucksack-laden pilgrims who I met during an extended Camino de Santiago pilgrimage to escape UK lockdowns, we were crossing the Minho River that serves as the border between Spain and Portugal’s
What should the US do about the Tigray crisis?
From our UK edition
A few of the hip young things sitting along the Lisbon quayside turned their heads my way as my walking sticks scraped along the pavement. I didn’t slow down, though, because I was self-conscious about how I looked. Hiking 2,000km along an extended Camino pilgrimage from the French-Spanish border through northern Spain then down through
The bloody horrors that have waylaid Iraq since the 2003 invasion obliterate thoughts of its glorious past
Does our society spark joy?
‘You can go to Hell, but I am going to Texas,’ said Davy Crockett. I think he had a point
We downed jugs of turbo, a popular Ethiopian concoction of white wine, beer and Sprite
By a British veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts
The insurgents did the sensible thing and left before our armored column arrived