This is a time of red skies and uncontrolled fires; this is a time when the dead are recalled, whose souls are alive to us again in the potent atmosphere of remembrance. This is a time of All Saint's, All Souls', of Halloween, of Bonfire Night, of Remembrance Day, when we set fires to protest at the growing darkness of winter, when the red poppies we wear throb with the pain of history, when we are full of the sense that the end of the year is nigh.
And this is an apocalyptic time; this is a time when people at large, the whole world over, see, in the stormy skies and violent tides of contemporary disasters, signs of the end of time; where it is not uncommon to hear talk of apocalypse in the doomsday scenarios of politicians, filmmakers, terrorists and ecologists.
So the question is, how are we to live in an age of apocalypse? Inspired by the Fortean Times cover article on the Tate Britain John Martin exhibition, my talk today: In search of love in the face of Apocalypse.
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