About

My mum’s teddy, affectionately known as ‘teddy’, lives in a sealed plastic bag next to her bed. One eye is missing, and both arms protrude stuffing from places you wouldn’t even know had been stuffed. This teddy has been well-loved. Such is its fate.

We’re a group of writers that believe humans kill the things they love. Whether it’s the book that falls apart after umpteen readings; the hype that leads you to love, buy and then replace your iPhone; or the exciting new degree that loses all its gloss in under a term: we believe there’s nothing that humans can’t kill if we set our hearts on it. The human heart’s restless like that.

But this isn’t a call for caution, it’s a call to arms — or rather, a call to love things better, not less — for we believe that this death is a grace. It’s a grace because if we didn’t kill the things we loved, they’d kill us. It’s a grace because once something has died, it can be raised. And it’s a grace because only once something’s raised from the dead can it be fully alive. Humans only die once, and culture is only as mortal as humanity.

These aren’t really our thoughts, they come from the life and teaching of the freest person that’s ever lived; a man so free, so full of life, that “when He wished to die He had to borrow death from others”. We believe that Jesus makes culture come alive: but it has to die first.

See what you think.

“And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde