The infinite art of John Donne
His life was blighted by poverty, but his poetry made exhilarating connections between sex, faith and death.
By
Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams is former Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, and a contributing writer to the New Statesman.
Latest articles
All Articles
Rowan Williams’s Diary: Judging the Booker Prize, the ethics of climate change, and the birth of our first grandchild
I look forward to telling my grandson his birth was toasted within a few hours alongside the 2021 Booker…
By
When God was an alpha male
How the Hebrew deity evolved from predatory strongman to a friend to human frailty.
By
The courage of Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu has died aged 90. In this recent piece, Rowan Williams reflected on how his life was a…
By
How Brexit changed us: The referendum was always a solution in search of a problem
Political decision-making ought to be a matter of knowing how to identify real dysfunctions in social life and public…
By
Why work lost its worth
The shared moral project of the next decade will be restoring the link between labour, community and a meaningful…
By
How Keats lives on
His radical depictions of desire and oblivion changed the course of English poetry – and, 200 years after his…
By
Notes on a crisis: With Covid and the climate crisis, we are failing the next generation
We are backing away from the job of resourcing young people to respond with intelligence, imagination and honesty.
By
The photo that shaped me: Rowan Williams on Madeleine Delbrêl
Here she is, squatting down, head cocked, birdlike, to listen to a small girl.
By