Uncertain times. We had to rearrange this month’s Reform interview after the original interviewee was forced to pull out at the last moment because of the hospitalisation of a spouse. Huge thanks to at short notice. Another writer withdrew their contribution to ‘A good question’ shortly before we went to press because the question had thrown them into a Covid-related crisis of faith. Our thoughts are with all of those whose lives are in turmoil in one way or another.

There is another change happening at Reform too. Sheila Maxey is stepping down as Reviews Editor after 13 years, to take up another role. Happily, her column ‘On the pilgrim way’, about faith in later life, continues. One of the oddities of modern ways of working – and one which is only likely to increase in the coming years – is that in the seven years I’ve been at Reform I’ve only met Sheila face to face a handful of times, in which time she has commissioned and edited about 400 reviews. All of us at Reform Towers – or in exile from there – have enjoyed and appreciated working with Sheila, however remotely, over the years, and you’ll have seen for yourself how good and dependable her editorial work has been. Thank you, Sheila.

And what about you? How are you bearing up? If you’re reading this online then it’s excellent to see you. We decided at the end of March to make the digital edition of Reform free to read for as long as we’re in lockdown because we have 70 issues’ worth of inspiration, comment, debate and crosswords there, which we thought might help keep people going. We’ve seen 1,300 readers take advantage of that, so it looks like we were right. If you’d like to try the print magazine next, there’s no harm in experimenting. You can get the next three issues for a £1 trial subscription by visiting .

And just to cover all the bases, if you’re reading this is in print and would like to see how lovely it is on screen, you can do that too, at . However you’re reading, take care and keep looking after each other.

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This article was published in the June 2020 edition of Reform

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