“For all its convenience, it [The London Orbital] is a route to nowhere, a road which simply connects to other roads.”

“Looking back at the line’s history as I write, I’m intrigued by the way its development, its marriage of pastoral and technological dreams, mirrors my own.”

“But here the wild seemed to have a different agenda, an insistence on a postmodern coexistence with the city, even a hint of triumphalism. In the mood of the times, it seemed almost insurrectionary.” — Richard Mabey

“And the sign said, ‘The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls’ And whispered in the sounds of silence.” — Paul Simon

(1) John Martin’s Last Judgement Triptych: The Apocalyptic Sublime in the Age of Spectacle (TATE)

“The descriptions of the Last Judgement triptych published in the accompanying exhibition pamphlet by Martin, or at least created with his approval, offer a stridently democratic, reforming vision of the last days on earth, with the materially successful and socially elevated (‘kings … great men … rich men’) suffering damnation, and the stream train, the most eloquent symbol of the speed and materialism of modern life, plunging into the depths to be replaced by a ‘new Earth’ of bucolic charms and timeless classical architecture.”

(2) Belloc on America & Europe After the Great War (The Imaginative Conservative)

“The defense of Western Civilization must be built around a defense of the Catholic Church and a program which reminded men of history, human nature and the effects of sin: ‘the strength of the trumps we hold is the consonance between Catholic morals (the fruit of Catholic doctrine) and the discoverable nature of man. Men can pragmatically discover that through the Faith human things return. Their despair in the absence of the Faith is the strongest asset we have.’”

(3) A quote from Bermuda’s Story by Terry Tucker:

“The arrival of the first steamship off the islands—the Marco Bozzaris—in October of 1833 was considered a strange and surprising event. She returned again in January of the following year and plied proudly up and down Hamilton Harbour several times to the astonishment of the crowds lining the shores. A story comes down from these times of an old fisherman, busy in his small boat anchored off the north shore, suddenly aware of a belching creature, moving without sails or oars. To his terrified eyes this was something from the nether regions. Hastily cutting the rope of his killick he scrambled ashore and up the rocks, shouting, ‘Perdition cometh!'”

(4) The Bridge in the Middle Distance by JMW Turner:

(5) Rest for the Soul: Finding God in Summer Stillness (Westminster Cathedral)