Our group headed up to the Lake District today, devoting much of our time to William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and to his wife, Mary, and his sister, Dorothy, who were both very important elements of his life and his creativity. It might seem odd that a tour focused on Latter-day Saint history should devote the better part of a day to the greatest of the English Romantic poets, but it makes entire sense to me. For one thing, Grasmere and... Read more
We met up with Kris Frederickson, a member of the Interpreter Foundation board and an organizer and co-host of this Interpreter Church history tour of England and then went to meet our motor coach and our local guide and friend, Peter Fagg, and the rest of our group — save two, who didn’t arrive until dinnertime tonight after flight delays — at the Manchester airport. Thereupon, we drove to the Liverpool Docks, where, walking about the area, we discussed... Read more
My wife and I spent multiple hours yesterday, Wednesday, scouting out the glorious British Museum. My usual strategy there over the years has been to try to see every room. By the end of the day, my head is splitting and I’m no longer enjoying it, but I’m determined to visit each and every single @#$& room in the building. Toward the end of this tour, though, I’m supposed to lead our group for about an hour and a... Read more
New, on the blog of the Interpreter Foundation, where nothing ever changes: “The Heartland Versus Mesoamerica, Part 5: The Narrow Strip of Wilderness,” written by Brant A. Gardner. As a small constituent part of a long-term project that I’m working on, I’ll be extracting notes over the next several weeks or (more likely) months from John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon: A Decade of New Research (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book, 1992), and intermittently sharing them here.... Read more
From the “Sometimes, You Can Only Laugh” Department: As usual on such occasions, I didn’t sleep on the non-stop trans-Atlantic flight from Salt Lake City to London. Instead, I read Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in which she first introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot — I can’t recall having read it before — and then, to my shame, watched five episodes from the first season of the current television series Watson, followed by listening... Read more
Back in 2022, in preparation for the launch of our Six Days in August film project (which continues with our series of forthcoming Becoming Brigham documentary short features, currently in production), I reread Eugene England, Brother Brigham (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980) and, as on my two previous readings of the book, really enjoyed it. As I’ve said before, I recommend Brother Brigham highly. If you can get hold of a copy of it, or find it online, I... Read more
I was browsing last night in W. H. Lewis, ed., Letters of C. S. Lewis (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), when I came across the following passage, which I don’t recall having ever noticed before. It’s an excerpt from a letter “To a Lady” (otherwise unidentified by the editor) that is dated 28 October 1961, slightly more than two years before Lewis’s own death on 22 November 1963 (the same day on which Aldous Huxley and... Read more
Although I can’t honestly recommend the presentation that began at 1:35 PM this afternoon, I’ll make this overall comment otherwise: If you didn’t come to the Tanner Building at BYU today and you didn’t listen online, you missed some really interesting material. Here is the program for today’s second and concluding session — Saturday, 10 May 2025: Saturday Session 2 — of the Interpreter Foundation’s conference on “Abraham and His Family: In Scripture, History, and Tradition”: Keynote Session Chair: John... Read more
These four new items were posted today on the moribund website of the comatose Interpreter Foundation: Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms: Chapter 2 “Warfare in the Book of Mormon,” written by Matthew Roper [Editor’s Note: We are pleased to present chapter 2 from a book entitled Anachronisms: Accidental Evidence in Book of Mormon Criticisms. It is presented in serialized form in this volume of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.] “Interpreting Interpreter: (Non-)Anachronisms... Read more
Newly posted on the blog of the perpetually unchanging, completely comatose website of the Interpreter Foundation: “My Favorite Chiasm in the Book of Mormon,” written by Mark Skousen The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs: “Jacob’s Temple Journey to Haran and Back,” written by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Matthew L. Bowen Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in The Temple: Plates, Patterns, & Patriarchs, edited by Stephen D. Ricks and Jeffrey M. Bradshaw. For more... Read more
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