In Depth:  Niv Lobo

Niv Lobo

There was a stream of articles and commentary in the weeks leading up to Jason Arday’s resignation as Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge; the stream became a deluge in the weeks following, and the deluge almost an ocean in the wake of his death. I followed the story avidly—did you?

First, I laughed: stories of inflated achievements invited ridicule, and the pomposity of an elite institution was put on display. The academic emperor was exposed as decidedly underdressed.

Niv Lobo

Some swords are double-edged; they can cut both ways, not just at those against whom they are wielded, but also those wielding them. And all who live by the sword (as Someone once said, Matthew 26v52) will die by the sword.

Last week’s by-election in Makerfield was a case in point. Sam Leith, writing in The Spectator, puts it well:

Niv Lobo

I remember, in an earlier phase of the internet, the sense of being part of a large, ongoing conversation. On Facebook and Twitter, one could be drawn (for better or for worse) into dialogue with all kinds of perceptive people one had never met in real life. Social media these days feels very different.

Between the whims of the algorithm, which seem never to promote the things I want to read or the things I write, and the sheer quantity of trolls, bots and malign presences drenching these platforms with tedium, one feels caught up in a crowd of people shouting at each other, never really feeling heard.

Niv Lobo

In the past month, I found myself ricocheting between two conflicting visions of virtue.

On the one hand, Malcolm Guite’s astonishing and luminous poem Galahad and the Grail (2026), which takes us into the heart of the Arthurian quest for life at its fullest and purest. ["Arthurian" refers to anything connected to the legends of King Arthur.]

Niv Lobo

Having devoured Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist (2022) with fascination, I wasn’t going to miss reading his latest, The Traitors Circle (2025).

The former was a harrowing account of Rudolf Vrba, the eponymous escapee from Auschwitz, and his attempts to testify to the world about the evils being done there. It raised the uncomfortable question: Why did it take the world so long to believe him, and act on it?

Niv Lobo

Over the Christmas holidays, Netflix released the final series of Stranger Things.

Since the first series in 2016, we’ve followed the outbreak of a dark, supernatural force in Hawkins, Indiana, the machinations of the US government and the military, and the children and teenagers who band together to confront it all.

Niv Lobo

Pornocracy (2025), by Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel, is a clarion call for a legislative and cultural revolution, one in which the depravity of pornography is recognised, its façade of respectability is pulled down, and the entire industry which profits from it is overthrown.

Their provocative title refers to the "system where our minds, relationships and laws are shaped by global-scale sexual exploitation." It is this which they seek to expose (which Pornocracy does comprehensively) and then dismantle (here, the results are more mixed).

Niv Lobo

Nolo episcopari! No, not a Harry Potter spell. It’s a Latin tagline – meaning "I don’t want to be made a Bishop!" – a reaction that has almost become traditional when someone is nominated to significant office in the church.

It’s an intuitive idea: the best person to be given power is the one who isn’t grasping for it. Given how much influence and authority the role entails, perhaps the most becoming candidate for an overseer in God’s church is one who refuses it.

Niv Lobo

Here’s one of the least wholesome and most shocking experiences in 21st century life: one is scrolling unknowingly, perhaps even unthinkingly, on one’s phone, and suddenly sees an act of murderous violence as a video plays automatically.

Particularly in the last few weeks, with footage of the murder of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, North Carolina, recently released; and then with the assassination of Charlie Kirk - political activist and committed Christian - while speaking at a campus event in Utah. We may be an ocean away, but we're connected enough for these tragedies to feature in our cultural conversation, not least when they are played and replayed on our screens.

Niv Lobo

I often think about a scene in The Simpsons Movie (2007): a terrifying dome comes down on Springfield, and its citizens are thrown into disarray.

In the panic, we see the church and Moe’s Bar emptying out, the congregants and the drinkers standing outside the respective buildings, looking up in horror.

Niv Lobo

Warning: the following content relates to crimes of abuse and could be both upsetting and triggering.

Recent headlines have reported on the shocking case of Stephen Ireland and David Sutton, both jailed for multiple child sex offences. The former has been a prominent LGBT advocate and campaigner, was a founder of ‘Pride in Surrey’, and cultivated significant relationships with local police — drawing added attention to the case.

Niv Lobo

One should never watch anything that wounds one’s conscience; Romans 14:23 tells us there are terrible consequences of acting against our conscience.

I don’t often, therefore, speak about my fascination with the horror genre in cinema. And yet, the popularity of horror films is worth pondering. Rather than engage at any length with the film which prompted these reflections — Robert Eggers’s 2024 remake, Nosferatu — what might its success teach us?

Niv Lobo

Near the start of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens describes Scrooge as ‘a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone’. When a pair of portly philanthropists assail Scrooge on Christmas Eve, looking for a charitable donation, he says something that proves the description accurate. On being told some would rather die than go to the workhouse, Scrooge says, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population’.

It is a moment of heart-stopping heartlessness. In the peerless Muppet adaptation, Beaker and Doctor Bunsen Honeydew shake their heads in disbelief and consternation. This moment has signalled Scrooge’s unmistakeable depravity to generations of readers, staking out just how far his inhumanity goes — and therefore just how drastic his redemption will need to be.

Niv Lobo

There’s a beautifully written, perfectly acted scene in an old TV show: two characters, husband and wife, have been in a heated argument. As they’re beginning to see one another’s point of view, and the heat is about to seep out of the argument, one admits that they were in the wrong.

Just as they add, ‘however’ - about to defend their corner - the other jumps in immediately: 'No. No "however". Just be wrong. Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it!'