Left title Introduction Right title
This site's home page.
Sermons and meditations I have given in church or at fellowship groups.
The text of a book I have written on the Beatitudes.
My Narnia-type fantasy novel for children of all ages.
Studies of some of the Greek and Hebrew words used in the Bible
The home page of our local parish church.
Manners and customs of Bible times.
Some links to other useful sites.
A rag-bag of bits and pieces that do not fit in anywhere else.
Something innovative and exciting.

Neil and Yvonne Booth
I'm glad you've decided to look this far. Let me tell you a little about myself. My name is Neil Booth and I am 60 years old and married to Yvonne. Yvonne (who as you can see from the accompanying photograph is nowhere near 60!) has multiple sclerosis but copes just fine and teaches music privately here in our home as well as playing the keyboard in our church band. I have two daughters — Heidi and Christy — and three grandchildren — Laura, Sam and Isaac.

Residence, Domicile & UK Taxation book
By profession, I am a chartered accountant and, until my retirement from KPMG nearly eight years ago following a quadruple heart bypass operation, was a partner in that firm and a leading UK tax specialist. (For anyone interested, my standard reference works include Residence, Domicile and UK Taxation published by Butterworths and National Insurance Contributions published by Tolleys.)

More to the point, however, I am a Reader in the Church of England, exercising my ministry at St James Church, Bolton, in the Diocese of Bradford.

Bradford is situated in northern Britain in the county of West Yorkshire; and contrary to popular belief, Yorkshire is not a county of dark Satanic mills where people wear cloth caps and breed whippets. It is in fact one of the most beautiful counties in Britain.

Even more to the point, I became a Christian as a result of an encounter with the Lord Jesus in Manchester at a Scripture Union rally to which I was taken by one of my school-teachers at the age of 11. It follows that I have now been a Christian for some 49 years. During the greater part of that time I have exercised a preaching and teaching ministry to which the Lord called me at the age of 16 and, currently, I minister not only within the context of Sunday services but also in a house fellowship which meets in our home on a weekly basis. For those who like these things to be spelled out clearly, I was 'baptised in the Holy Spirit' under the ministry of Rev (now Father) Michael Harper on 5 November 1967 close to the very beginnings of the charismatic renewal in the Church of England.

Fine! But I still haven't answered the question: Why this webzine?

Truth to tell, there are a number of reasons.

The first is that writing and publishing are in my blood. I've already mentioned my tax-technical works, but, for the six years leading up to my retirement, I also wrote and published a rather idiosyncratic tax journal called Booth's NIC Brief which had a wide and enthusiastic readership among accountants and lawyers throughout the UK. (Now you know where I found the title for this webzine.) I've now also written a fantasy called The Waters of Pendallyn for which I cannot yet find a publisher, but which I am now able to serialise here.

The second is that I'm something of a computer junkie. For a long time I have been programming in Visual Basic, and the challenge of creating web pages in HTML, CSS, DOM, PHP & MySQL, and Javascript was irresistible once I was on the Internet. (Check out the Areopagus pages if you want to see where all this is taking me!)

The third is that as a Christian I see it as my task to spread the Word by every means that the Lord has put at my disposal.

I hope that you not only enjoy what you find here but that you get something good from it too. Let me know what you think of the Brief. I'll be happy to receive your e-mails. And please keep visiting. I'll try to update the site with fresh material at fairly frequent intervals.

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