The way we were
ON 2 October, Robert Runcie would have celebrated his 100th birthday. Family and friends gathered for a commemorative evensong at Canterbury Cathedral. Lord Chartres preached a sermon deserving of a wide readership. It set me thinking afresh about Runcie’s time as Archbishop.
Throughout his primacy, the Conservatives had a big majority in Parliament; the Labour Opposition was divided and weak. Sounds familiar? Yet things were not quite the same as they are now. The Archbishop and the Church of England then made headline news, regularly and controversially, which seems surprising given that Runcie was no controversialist. Those old enough will remember the fuss over the Falklands sermon. Less frequently recalled is the General Synod debate on the report The Church and the Bomb. It was televised live on BBC2 in 1983 — which seems unimaginable now.
There was also a national furore over Faith in the City. So the list could go on. The Church of England was not as self-absorbed in that period as it seems to be now, although the row, late in 1987, over the Crockford Preface may have been a turning point of introversion. That tragic affair made the front pages for many days, indicating that the wider world then took an interest in what went on within the C of E. These days, Andrew Brown searches hard for a reference in the press to even the most self-critical of church reports.
It is 30 years since Runcie retired. It was a different age, but seems in retrospect a much more energising one. Perhaps it could be revisited with profit.
Social animals
THAT trip to Canterbury felt like an adventure. We haven’t been far, over the summer. Instead, the world has come to Cornwall. “It feels like Cornwall is being loved to death,” said Tony Foster, an artist based in the county and well known for his paintings of the world’s wildernesses.
Resorts such as St Ives and Newquay were definitely not places to “get away from it all”. On 4 August, there were 12,000 people on the beach at Perranporth: four times the population of the town. There have been debates about herd immunity, but the herd instinct of human beings is clearly alive and well.
New horizons
EVEN so, it was possible to find quieter places in Cornwall at the height of the season. We went to Morvah, nine miles west of St Ives. Looking out to the Atlantic Ocean, the tiny village feels on the edge of the world, but entirely at ease with itself. It has a small art gallery. We went to see “Summit”, the latest exhibition by the priest-artist Jim Whitlock.
The summit in question was Mount Everest, painted from many vantage points — the result of a visit to Nepal, before Covid made such things impossible. The rugged West Cornwall setting meant that these paintings of Everest seemed more at home than they may have done in a London gallery.
Jim Whitlock is now very collectible. As a way of supplementing a clergy pension, becoming a saleable artist is a brilliant idea. I like to think that his period as artist-in-residence at Norwich Cathedral helped to catapult Jim to his current success.
Snake-oil supremo
TO PROVE to opera-loving friends staying with us that Truro is a place of high culture, we took them to see Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore in the garden of a large house near by. At £20, the tickets were a shade cheaper than Glyndebourne; so expectations of this new venture were moderate, but the production was enormous fun and very professionally staged. Let’s hope Park House becomes a name in the opera world.
I had forgotten just how well Donizetti captures the folly of human vanity. The con man Dulcamara sells a great range of magical potions, including his version of the elixir of love with which Tristan won Isolde. In reality, it is red plonk sold at a vast price, but buyers convince themselves of its effectiveness. The ease with which Dulcamara fools everyone provides a wonderful display of human gullibility. All he would need is a website and favourable reviews on social media to belong entirely to the modern age.
Rabid rep
THE feast of St Sithney falls on 19 September, and so to Sithney I went. It’s a small village near Helston. The fine parish church was closed for more than three years after the floor gave way, revealing many skeletons underneath and also evidence of earlier churches stretching back to the eighth century. Sithney was a Celtic abbot who is also revered at Guisseny in Brittany as St Sezni. The chasuble that I wore was a gift from Guisseny.
As is usual for Celtic saints, reliable information about this one is hard to come by, but a surviving legend is indicative of Celtic humour. Apparently, Sithney was asked to be the patron saint of unmarried girls, but he complained that they would bother him too much in the heavenly places as they sought his assistance in their search for husbands. He was made the patron saint of mad dogs instead.
The Rt Revd Graham James is a former Bishop of Norwich, now an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of Truro.