News from an Anglican missionary in Africa

“I am now pretty fit in myself and am spending a few days slacking, on Doctor’s orders, except for writing sermons for Holy Week and Easter and then translating them into Chinyanja. Learning the local language has been a trial for me, but I am aware of the immense privilege I have in ministering to the folk,” as described by The Rev’d Harold Aldwyn Machell Cox CBE, the great-granduncle of Frances Thompson, in a series of family letters called ‘The Budget’, which is held in the famous Bodleian Library

Advent serendipity

In this special Advent tale, Frances Thompson tells us about her serendipitous birth on the first day of Advent in 1970 and about a surprising find in Oxford’s famous Bodleian Library

Three Anglican priests, 10 siblings, a dog named ‘Satan’ and hundreds of letters

“Picture, if you will, a large extended family on holiday in Porlock, Somerset, in the south west of England. The date is August 1906 and the family have taken rooms at Birchanger Farm for a month where they have been enjoying excursions, bicycling, walking and bathing,” writes Frances Thompson following her discovery that the famous Bodleian Library holds hundreds of her family’s letters, dating back to the early 1900s