From the Canon’s Mouth. A Collection of Prose, Verse and Doggerel. Richard Tydeman. Foreword by JW Daniel, Grand Secretary of UGLE. ISBN 0 907655 440. QC Correspondence Circle Ltd. 83pp. £7.95 from QCCC Sales Ltd, Freemasons’ Hall, 60 Gt Queen St, London WC2B 5BA. All royalties to go to the Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys.

The Rev Canon Richard Tydeman needs no introduction to long-serving brethren. He is one of the most respected masons in the world and, judging from his latest book, it is not difficult to see why. From the Canon’s Mouth, “A Second Booklet of Humour, Thought and Information” lives up to its title. The humour is rich, the thought, both down-to-earth and profound, and the information, clear, useful and stimulating. If we had a TV service worthy of the history and character of the country, Canon Tydeman would have a weekly show. Five minutes of reflections from the Canon’s mouth are worth a month of the bloated opinions of most of the nations’s more famous pundits. The Canon is a treasure of the Craft.
    The contents include essays on masonic bridge-building (pontificating); the Apron; Freemasonry and the Church; Understanding Masonic English; 18th century Morals; the Book of Ecclesiastes; the Third Degree Tracing Board; Who was Zerubbabel?; Who was Nehemiah?; Who was St George?; and an excellent essay on the identity of Hiram Abif, among others. The poems are light and gently funny, and none the worse for that, coming as they do from a mind blessed and baptised in both perennial and pre-war sentiments and sensibilities, now almost lost to us in their living expression.
    Canon Tydeman has a great gift: vision, and from that, and from his many fruitful years of masonic experience: perspective.