Monday 11th July was the anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre, carried out in Bosnia in 1995. I signed the Book of Remembrance in the House of Commons, and attended a Memorial Reception at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Several survivors spoke of their memories of this, the most serious crime in a long process of…
On Saturday 10th May, this famous mosque, designed in the 16th century by the Ottoman architect Sinan, rose like a phoenix from its ashes. It had been totally destroyed by explosives, not by fighting, during the war in Bosnia. Banja Luka is the capital in the north-west of Bosnia of Republica Serbska, one of the…
The first stage of the restoration of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem has been completed. Bethlehem was the birth-place of Jesus, known as the Christ by most of the world, and by Muslims as the Prophet Isa. The Church was built in the 4th century CE by Saint Helena, the wife and widow of…
Ottoman Treasures Live Again – A few years ago I stood on the famous bridge, Stari Most, the old bridge in Mostar, just before its formal reopening. Last week I saw photographs of the newly re-built and restored Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka, north-west Bosnia. This work of the well-known architect, Sinan (or his pupils),…
I give below the text of a letter from Rev Donald Reeves, former rector of St James’s Piccadilly, and now Director of the charity called “The Soul of Europe”. The National conference he mentions is not yet fully funded “I am grateful for the generous coverage of the service at Westminster Abbey, recalling the events at…
