THERE has been much appreciation expressed in the warm obituaries that followed the death last week of Lord Harries of Pentregarth, a former Bishop of Oxford (News, 1 May). His voice was well-known: he presented Radio 4’s Thought for the Day for more than 50 years.
I first met him when I was a novice radio producer, and he had recently begun his ministry as Vicar of All Saints’, Fulham. I am not sure whether I produced his very first Thought for the Day, but it must have been one of his first. I remember his well-prepared scripts, his casual ease at the microphone, and his range of insight.
The last time I met him was during the Oxford Literary Festival in 2024, when I interviewed him about his memoir, The Shaping of a Soul (Books, 6 April 2023). He spoke about how he valued being Welsh, his hopes for the C of E, and his firm belief in the afterlife.
In spite of his long public ministry, there was something reticent, even shy, about Richard Harries. Hard-working and efficient though he was, he remained a private person. His inner life was fed by a voracious capacity for reading, a love of the arts, and an appreciation of beauty. His pastoral instincts came from within, and did not reflect any obvious need for affirmation from others.
I cannot think of anyone like him among today’s bishops. There are good broadcasters, peers, and pastors, but no one with his range of interest in the arts, culture, and history. His human touch and sympathy for the suffering, so evident in his Thoughts, was never overplayed, but reflected a gentle understanding of the soul in both its travails and triumphs. His home life was complicated: his wife, Jo, suffered from significant bouts of illness, which both of them bore with courage, supporting one another.
One of his last Thoughts, broadcast at the beginning of Lent, was an appreciation of the artist Dame Tracey Emin and her recovery from addiction and cancer. “We do not have to wait until death stares us in the face to have a second life,” he said. The voice was a little huskier, the timing a little less assured; but here was the authentic voice of a Christian thinker whose instinct was to discern the gospel pearl in the depths of loss and suffering, a pearl constantly refined by reading, listening, and reflection.
How he had the time and space to run a diocese and then to be an effective peer I cannot imagine. Yet I still find that what I remember most about him was that slight sense of distance, perhaps a reflection of that particular quality of Christian detachment, so misleadingly called apatheia. This is not indifference, but the necessary inner freedom to discern and to do God’s will. Send us more bishops like him, please, God.
Read our obituary of Lord Harries here and his last book review for the Church Times here.