AUNTIE JOYCE was my mum’s elder sister, by many years. She was born “out of wedlock” in 1909, when my grandmother, Ellen, was 17, as the result of what we would now call a date rape. Ellen was sent away to a home for wayward girls, where she was put into service, and Auntie was raised by her grandparents, and called them Mummy and Daddy.
Joyce thought Ellen was her big sister until she was 14 and leaving school. Joyce, too, then entered service, where she stayed her whole working life, except for the duration of the Second World War, when she ran the canteen at Sidcup police station.
After the war, she became housekeeper for the family of Sir Harold Scott, the first civilian Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police. When she retired, in 1968, they gave her a Book of Common Prayer in a slipcase; and when she died, in 1994, she left it to me, full of prayer cards and pressed flowers. Signed by Sir Harold and Lady Scott, it was Auntie’s most precious possession. And she passed on to me not just the book, but a simple unwavering faith — light on theology, but strong on certainty, to which I have aspired ever since. She was a reader — the only one on either side of my family — and, although I’m too clever by half, she would be proud that I have returned to the faith of my family, Prayer Book in hand.
JORDAN: The Comeback, is the fifth album by Prefab Sprout, released in 1990; it was the last album I bought on vinyl, and — since I lost access to a turntable a few weeks later — also the first album I bought on CD. I have been a huge fan of the band since their debut album, Swoon, was released in 1984. The songs are written by Paddy McAloon: in my view, one of the great songwriters of our time. He has been described as a Catholic agnostic, and I suppose I can hear the doubt — but I can also hear traces of a deep faith, which have held me in mine, more than any numbers of hymns or oratorios. I am, for good or ill, a rockist soulboy; just one who is on the side of Johnny Cash, Al Green, and Nick Cave.
Jordan: The Comeback has a complicated structure, but suffice to say that the last five songs constitute a fascinating reflection on what Christianity sets out to do. (“One of the Broken”); the nature of forgiveness, and who receives it (“Michael” and “Mercy”); and death and the afterlife (“Scarlet Nights” and “Doo-Wop in Harlem”).
Worship songs don’t have to be happy-clappy; in fact, the best ones hardly pass as worship songs at all — unless you listen with faith. If pop groups or rock bands or whatever you want to call them are going to write songs about the Lord, this is how I like them: slantwise.
IN JANUARY 2020, I signed a contract for a book about my ancestors, One Fine Day. Our roots lie in the Ardennes, and we planned a trip. One of the places I wanted to visit was Charlemagne’s Palace Chapel, in Aachen. Despite having been bombed in the Second World War, it remains perhaps the most astounding building I’ve ever visited: a “thin” place, to rival Iona.
Just before the trip began, I’d been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer. The oncologists told me that I would need to begin chemotherapy later in the year. In the shop at Aachen Cathedral, my wife bought me a set of wooden rosary beads to help my prayer during the long slog of chemo.
Sadly, by the time chemo actually started, I had another small treasure: an olive-wood holding cross, to which I tied my little string of beads. This had been given to my mum, dying of Covid in June 2020, by the chaplains at the Royal Sussex Hospital, in Brighton. Mum was blind, right at the end, and the cross was a blessing. My stepdad wasn’t allowed in — none of us were. But the chaplains sat with her throughout, praying, telling her Bible stories. She died holding this little cross, they told me. And now, as I’m due to begin my second round of chemo, the beads and the cross will come with me, and I shall tell the beads, including Mum’s cross, as I sit in the chair again, and thank God for hospital chaplains.
Ian Marchant is an author and broadcaster, and the founder of Radio Free Radnorshire.