Fear Not

And so we come once again to the fireside of the year, where the strange and lovely truth of Christmas draws us to homely things.  As the years go by, and I find myself less and less at home in the time and place given to me, I cross the threshold of this feast with ever greater relief.

It is not easy to live in, this age of deceptive appearances.  Behind the superficial glass and the liquid crystal screens our sorrows are undiminished.  The Britain in which, for the first time in fifteen centuries, a minority of people now profess to be Christians, is no happier for its loss of faith.  The old ways we tore to pieces are giving way not to the promised utopia, but to a new, sullen, disenchanted, resentful existence.   Not only are things going wrong, but we struggle to agree about what has gone wrong, let alone how to make things better.  Identity politics have captured many formerly trusted institutions and done great damage to their reputations, as well as confusing or upsetting many well-meaning people.  And our response to the general economic strain is not, in general, an effort to build up solidarity and courage, or to provide an alternative to rapaciousness and greed, but renewed howling against our forebears and the foundations of our society.  That old, gentle Britain to which we owe so much, and for which I still stand, has become our scapegoat.

This is now a Britain in which many shared things are no longer well-made or looked after; in which even those trying to do well seem unable to overcome the shoulder-shrugging culture around them.  Wherever we go, any expectations of high standards seem to be frustrated.  Thoroughfares and public spaces are tatty and uncared for; lifts and escalators are broken or vandalised.  Or things will not be as they first appear.  The Internet, for instance is full of false promises: websites will co-operate for a moment before the sentence you were reading disappears behind a salvo of pop-ups about cookie settings or newsletter subscriptions.  A special offer will turn out to entail endless and spurious terms and conditions.  Sorry, all our operatives are busy at the moment.  Sorry, this desk is unstaffed.  Sorry, this machine is out of order.

It is a Britain in which language itself is often used insincerely, too often more for the purposes of manipulation than anything else.  Euphemisms and weasel words and empty slogans are so prevalent that it is a constant effort to pare speech of them, to speak or write plainly and truthfully.  We often feel patronised and tricked and taken advantage of.

It is a Britain in which people of good will increasingly bear the brunt of the selfishness of those of ill-will; in which those in positions of responsibility are often unable to exercise their offices with principle and clarity; in which those who shout loudest tend to get their way.  Only amongst a few is there even a sense of embarrassment at our irreverence, our arrogance, our squandering of our inheritance.  It is a Britain which, I now see, is indeed mortal.

It is an old and noble nation forgetting her honour, and learning anew the barbarism that the old faith once kept at bay.  There are grave misdeeds and acts of calculatedly barbaric violence at home and abroad, an ebbing away of civility and common decency, and the unabated undermining of marriage and the family and of the Christian vision of the dignity of the human person.

But amidst all this, even as the darkness presses in, another voice, another kind of language.  And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields… Words which, strange as they are to the ear, are not evasive, do not deceive; which have that unmistakable ring of truth:

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

They are words which contradict all the smirking arrogance and squalid tragedies of our time, but not as we would have supposed or dared to have hoped.  Something different is going on: something strange and also sweet… Something so strange and sweet as the call of our true and longed-for home.

The darkness presses in on us, often as intensely as it pressed in on the Roman province of Judaea and on Bethlehem; pressed right down on the stable-roof and sought entry.  But from within that stable it was repelled and defied, as it is repelled and defied tonight, and for ever, by light — by the one Light which, as we have often been told, the darkness cannot overpower.  And our liberation is both more cosmic and more intimate than instant deliverance from hard times or a faithless epoch could ever have been: we are freed from the very foes that blight us most: sin and death.

This year is the 110th anniversary of one of my favourite Christmas poems: Noel: Christmas Eve 1913, by Robert Bridges.  Gerald Finzi set it to music in his Christmas cantata In Terra Pax (see above) though for the third stanza he substituted the verses quoted above, from the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel.

Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913

Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. 

A frosty Christmas Eve
when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village
in the water’d valley
Distant music reach’d me
peals of bells a-ringing:
The constellated sounds
ran sprinking on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above
with stars was spangled o’er.

Then sped my thoughts to keep
that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching
by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields
and marvelling could not tell
Whether it were angels
or the bright stars singing.

Now blessed be the tow’rs
that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer
unto God for our souls:
Blessed be their founders
(said I) an’ our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ
in the belfries to-night
With arms lifted to clutch
the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above
and the mad romping din.

But to me heard afar
it was starry music
Angels’ song, comforting
as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me
by the riches of time
Mellow’d and transfigured
as I stood on the hill
Heark’ning in the aspect
of th’ eternal silence.

Wishing all readers a very merry and restful Christmas.

Ticket Offices Saved

Wadhurst station in the Sussex Weald, 27th November 2021.

At long last, some good news for the railways — the proposals to close virtually every railway ticket office in England have now been completely scrapped.  A quarter of a million responses were made to the consultation: a huge public outcry, and a justified one.

One of the railway’s greatest strengths is, or ought to be, its ability to look after passengers and to give them confidence in travelling.  This is something the roads, in the grip as they are of Darwinian principles, cannot do.  The steady withdrawal of personnel from platforms and trains and bureaux undermines this great advantage, to say nothing of discriminating against those who are unable to use the grinning machines installed their place.

As my friend Maolsheachlann says, “People power works!  Let’s not forget it!”

In Memoriam

The Remembrance side-chapel at King’s College, Cambridge, 11th November, 2023.  In the main chapel, as this photograph was taken, the organist was softly rehearsing the accompaniment to the movement ‘Reconciliation’ from Vaughan Williams’ cantata Dona Nobis Pacem.

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness.  Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks.  All this is ended.

Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)

Fanfare for Allhallowstide

Fresco of the Communion of Saints at the Padua Baptistery (painted by Giusto de Menabuoi, 1375–1376)
© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

 

Reposted according to tradition…
 
     How shall we pilgrims keep the law of love?
  How shall we follow where our Lord has led?
  The saints know how: they point the way ahead;
  They watch the road to Heaven from above.

  The saints were young and old, were great and small;
  However they were called, one truth they knew:
  Whatever works of woe the world may do,
  The Lord shall never let His faithful fall.

  So we on earth, we must be saints as well,
  We wayward wayfarers whom they invite
  To blaze with love, to set the world alight,
  To join them in the joy in which they dwell.

  As we must one day die, they also died,
  But live now as we hope we too shall live.
  To all our friends in Heaven let us give
  Our joyful greetings at Allhallowstide!

‘Such was thy ruin, music-making elm…’

Earlier this year, for the anniversary of John Clare’s birthday (13th July 1793), his sonnet Summer Shower was read out on Radio 3’s Breakfast programme:

Black grows the southern sky betokening rain,

And humming hive-bees homeward hurry by;

They feel the change — so let us shun the grain,

And take the broad road while our feet are dry.

Ay, there some dropples moistened on my face,

And pattered on my hat — ’tis coming nigh!

Let’s look about, and find a sheltering place.

The little things around, like you and I,

Are hurrying through the grass to shun the shower.

Here stoops an ash-tree — hark! the wind gets high,

But never mind; this ivy, for an hour,

Rain as it may, will keep us dryly here:

That little wren knows well his sheltering bower,

Nor leaves his dry house though we come so near.

So unmistakeably Clare — the detail, the directness, the demonstrativeness.  No pretention, no clever devices, only the immediacy of his journalistic jottings.  ‘This ivy’, ‘that little wren’ — we are there under the ash-tree with him.

This prompted me to return to his poems, after too long an absence.  Reading them over the past few months I have been struck once again by his sheer alertness to his surroundings, to every detail of his ‘home turf’, and also by his self-awareness: he sees not only what he goes looking for, but himself as he looks, pulling his hat over his eyes or crawling on his hands and knees through the undergrowth, a creature like any of the others.

‘I often pulled my hat over my eyes to watch the rising of the lark, or to see the hawk hang in the summer sky and the kite take its circles round the wood.  I often lingered a minute on the woodland stile to hear the woodpigeons clapping their wings among the dark oaks.  I hunted curious flowers in rapture and muttered thoughts in their praise. I loved the pasture with its rushes and thistles and sheep-tracks.  I adored the wild, marshy fen with its solitary heronshaw sweeing along in its melancholy sky. I wandered the heath in raptures among the rabbit burrows and golden-blossomed firze.  I dropt down on a thymy mole-hill or mossy eminence to survey the summer landscape… I marked the various colours in flat, spreading fields, checkered into closes of different-tinctured grain like the colours of a map; the copper-tinted clover in blossom; the sun-tanned green of the ripening hay; the lighter charlock and the sunset imitation of the scarlet headaches; the blue corn-bottles crowding their splendid colours in large sheets over the land and troubling the cornfields with destroying beauty; the different greens of the woodland trees, the dark oak, the paler ash, the mellow lime, the white poplars peeping above the rest like leafy steeples, the grey willow shining in the sun, as if the morning mist still lingered on its cool green… I observed all this with the same rapture as l have done since.  But I knew nothing of poetry.  It was felt and not uttered.’

— from Clare’s Autobiography

But as well as this delighted detail I was also struck again by the grief, and indeed by the anger in his verse.  He had good reason for both.  He of all poets, he of all nature-lovers, had the misfortune to live at the time of the Enclosures Act, and as a young man was himself employed actually to drive in the fence-posts that closed him off forever from the heaths and woodlands of his childhood.  Of course these landscapes were often subsequently physically destroyed, so that Clare was an exile in his own parish.  This experience almost certainly contributed to the mental distress of his later life.

What do I mean by the bitterness and anger?  One poem in particular struck me, ‘The Fallen Elm’, from The Midsummer Cushion (1824).  It begins in a typical Clareian minor key: an unvarnished portrait of country life, with its mingled discomforts and consolations.  But then comes a line which tightens the whole pitch of the poem: ‘Old favourite tree, thou’st seen times changes lower / But change till now did never injure thee.’  There follows a remarkable outburst at the injustice of those who have felled the elm in the name of false freedom, whom he repeatedly calls ‘hypocrites’: ‘Self interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways / So thy old shadow must a tyrant be.’  The tree has to go not because of what it is but because of how it is seen by the all-conquering Self: as an obstacle.  ‘With axe at root he felled thee to the ground / And barked of freedom.  O I hate the sound!’, and we cannot tell whether it is the sound of the blows of the axe that he hates, or the barked slogans of freedom.  Perhaps precisely because of his eye for detail and love of the particular, Clare had no patience for vague, abstract notions like ‘freedom’ which, in liberating only the elm’s destroyers at the expense of its friends, destroyed the irreplaceable intricacies of his world.

Then comes the coda with the unbearable, tear -startling line, ‘Such was thy ruin, music-making elm’.  I think we all know this feeling, of rage and grief and powerlessness in seeing some old, benevolent, protective heirloom hacked to pieces in the name of progress, or freedom so-called, or some other shallow abstraction often merely a euphemism for naked self-interest.

Old elm that murmured in our chimney top

The sweetest anthem autumn ever made

And into mellow whispering calms would drop

When showers fell on thy many-coloured shade

And when dark tempests mimic thunder made

While darkness came as it would strangle light

With the black tempest of a winter night

That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root,

How did I love to hear the winds upbraid

Thy strength without – while all within was mute.

It seasoned comfort to our hearts’ desire,

We felt thy kind protection like a friend

And pitched our chairs up closer to the fire,

Enjoying comforts that was never penned.

Old favourite tree, thou’st seen times changes lower,

But change till now did never injure thee,

For time beheld thee as his sacred dower

And nature claimed thee her domestic tree;

Storms came and shook thee many a weary hour,

Yet steadfast to thy home thy roots hath been;

Summers of thirst parched round thy homely bower

Till earth grew iron — still thy leaves was green.

The childern sought thee in thy summer shade

And made their play house rings of sticks and stone;

The mavis sang and felt himself alone

While in they leaves his early nest was made

And I did feel his happiness mine own,

Nought heeding that our friendship was betrayed —

Friend not inanimate—though stocks and stones

There are and many formed of flesh and bones

Thou owned a language by which hearts are stirred

Deeper than by a feeling clothed in words,

And speakest now what’s known of every tongue

Language of pity and the force of wrong.

What cant assumes, what hypocrites may dare

Speaks home to truth and shows it what they are.

I see a picture that thy fate displays

And learn a lesson from thy destiny:

Self interest saw thee stand in freedom’s ways

So thy old shadow must a tyrant be

Thou’st heard the knave abusing those in power

Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free;

Thou’st sheltered hypocrites in many an hour

That when in power would never shelter thee;

Thou’st heard the knave supply his canting powers

With wrong’s illusions when he wanted friends

That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers

And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends —

With axe at root he felled thee to the ground

And barked of freedom.  O I hate the sound!

Time hears its visions speak and age sublime

Had made thee a disciple unto time.

It grows the cant term of enslaving tools

To wrong another by the name of right;

It grows the licence of o’erbearing fools

To cheat plain honesty by force of might.

Thus came enclosure — ruin was its guide

But freedom’s clapping hands enjoyed the sight

Though comfort’s cottage soon was thrust aside

And workhouse prisons raised upon the site.

E’en nature’s dwelling far away from men —

The common heath — became the spoilers’ prey:

The rabbit had not where to make his den

And labour’s only cow was drove away

No matter — wrong was right and right was wrong

And freedom’s brawl was sanction to the song.

 — Such was thy ruin, music-making elm:

The rights of freedom was to injure thine.

As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm

In freedom’s name the little that is mine.

And there are knaves that brawl for better laws

And cant of tyranny in stronger powers

Who glut their vile unsatiated maws,

And freedom’s birthright from the weak devours.

This is a poem altogether worthy of its place in the canon of fallen-tree poems — I think in particular of Hopkins’ ‘Binsey Poplars’ and Vernon Watkins’ ‘Trees in a Town’ — and in late September the same anger burned in me as I read of the sawing down of the eponymous tree of Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall — apparently out of pure spite, and without the grace even to pretend some justification of of ‘freedom’ or practicality or self-interest.  Such wanton destruction, such malice that is so hard to forgive: it is no surprise that such deeds roused even gentle men like Clare to righteous anger.

John Constable, ‘Study of the Trunk of an Elm Tree’, c. 1821.  (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Poems from John Clare (ed. Jonathan Bate), Selected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 2004).

A year since the loss of Queen Elizabeth

What is there to say, on the first anniversary of the death of our beloved Queen Elizabeth?  I miss her, as I knew I would, and know I always will.  Her wisdom, her smile, her words of encouragement: we are having to carry on without them.

The grief was very deep — the void in the stomach, the taste of iron on the tongue — but so too was the consolation of all that followed: the lying-in-state, the funeral procession, the final Committal at Windsor; their dignity and beauty.  They were days out of time, in which we were reminded of a different way of doing things — the Queen’s way — the only false note being the decision to bring her coffin to London by air, rather than by rail.  But in any case I shall never forget the wordless television pictures of the mourners filing past her coffin in Westminster Hall — mourners whose numbers I had the privilege to join.  That collective four-day farewell was also a pact of remembrance: we who recognised in that witness, in that pilgrimage, a vindication of the Queen’s faith and virtue, stepped out of Westminster Hall with a greater determination to live our ordinary lives more as Elizabeth lived her extraordinary one.

But we remain loyal to and continue to pray for our Sovereign King Charles, who in his benevolent melancholic way is exercising wisdom of his own.  His Majesty has written today,

In marking the first anniversary of Her late Majesty’s death and my Accession, we recall with great affection her long life, devoted service and all she meant to so many of us.

I am deeply grateful, too, for the love and support that has been shown to my wife and myself during this year as we do our utmost to be of service to you all.

Charles R.

The reception of H. M. the late Queen’s coffin at Westminster Hall.  James O’Donnell’s arrangement of the 139th Psalm is sung by the choirs of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal.  ‘O Lord, thou hast searched me out, and known me: thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine up-rising…’

Ticket office closures: deadline imminent

Ely station, where the staff pride themselves on making their own announcements for the trains, rather than relying on an automated system.  20th May, 2014.

A reminder that tomorrow, September 1st, is the deadline for submissions to the consultation on the proposed closure of virtually every ticket office in England.  If any readers feel even a tenth as strongly as I do that this should not happen, I urge you to fill in the consultation here: https://www.transportfocus.org.uk/ticket-office-consultation/.

I wrote about my own objections in this post, but they are put far more eloquently by my Irish friend Maolsheachlann, who comments:

I have delayed reading this post until now because the subject upsets me so much. There’s always an assumption, or at least a hope, in the back of my mind that there will be SOME end to the dehumanization of daily life. Then something like this happens, or is threatened to happen, and makes me think “no worst, there is none”.

The fact that there is a terrible outcry gives me SOME hope, but it also makes me wonder are the powers that be just behaving strategically, Propose something much worse than they have in mind, and people will feel gratified when it’s modified.

A similar situation occurred in Ireland recently when Allied Irish Banks announced they would be withdrawing cash services from many of their branches. They stepped back from this after a public outcry, but are they always just softening us up?

For once, I strongly agree with the Guardian. Indeed, this is a subject on which right and left can unite.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/aib-climbs-down-over-plans-to-remove-cash-services-from-70-branches-due-to-public-unease/41859301.html

I use the various apps to navigate public transport here, and although it’s better to have them than not, I find them extremely stressful and confusing, especially under pressure. A human face with expertise is so much more welcome.

This is happening everywhere. Cinemas are closing box offices and selling tickets at the popcorn stand. Post offices are shutting down. Banks are shunting everybody to the website. In my own university, the library is getting more and more queries for the whole campus because we are one of the few human points of contact.

I hope to God they reconsider and scrap this plan completely. 

He adds,

Once, when I was riding the train through England, I got off at the wrong station for my connecting journey. I remember feeling very panicked and upset, because I didn’t have much money and I couldn’t afford to buy another ticket. The station master was a big fat man with a red face and a gentle voice. He reassured me and printed me off a ticket for another train.

It was actually a lovely moment. The station was very quiet, it was just me and the station master. It was a warm summer’s day. If all I’d been left with was a smartphone, I would have been clean out of luck. And we all know that these other staff supposedly patrolling the station floor are only a bait; they will be gone very soon, if they materialize at all, and the process will be fully automated.

Ticket office closures — Beeching all over again

My friend M. down at the station thinks this has been in the offing for years, “We’re closing,” he said in a resigned way when the news first came out, though he has since become more defiant.  His impression was that the Government is moving to implement a long-held ambition (and it does seem to be the Government, the Department for Transport, which wants this change, rather than the railway companies).

And the scale of the proposed cuts is breath-taking: they want to leave only a handful of ticket offices in the larger stations.  It is Beeching all over again.  Only 12% of tickets are sold by ticket clerks, goes the claim, and so at my local station and thousands of others ‘it is proposed that all ticket office windows […] will close, with staff moving to other areas of the station, where there is customer demand’.  

This slippery language makes my blood boil.  Customer demand is directed precisely to the ticket office, the accepted place for buying tickets and obtaining information.  This is decline, but worse than decline; decline with a smirk on its face, the brazen cheek to speak of a ‘change’ to the ticket office when what is intended is its outright elimination.  So might Henry VIII have spoken of his ‘change’ to the monasteries, or Brutus of his ‘change’ to Caesar’s abdomen.  

The difficulties of financing the railways are not trivial.  Passenger numbers are currently somewhere between 94–100% of pre-pandemic figures, but, because the recovery has been stronger in cheaper off-peak leisure travel than in the traditional backbone of passenger railways’ finances, namely commuter traffic, overall revenue is not.  Even so, the answer is surely to grow that revenue, not, as here, to cut off streams of revenue merely because they seem to be less efficient.

But a broader point is to be made beyond the merely financial.  One of the great strengths of the railways is that they are able to say to the passenger, ‘We can look after you’.  The network is complicated; ticketing as presently arranged is confusing; plenty of people lack confidence in travelling.  The ticket clerk can offer passengers something intangible yet incredibly valuable — peace of mind.  And this extends to the atmosphere of the station — the sense of emptiness and alienation resulting from the decline, in recent decades and across all sorts of public realms, of staff ‘keeping a general eye on things’ should already have taught us this lesson.

The 0927 to Horsham draws into Ockley station in Surrey, 14th May 2018.

This development is poor reward for the sterling work M. and his colleagues have done over the years.  He told me yesterday that he isn’t interested in standing about in the wind and the rain; it isn’t worth risking his health and he will probably give up if the plans go ahead.  Another friendly face lost, and we will all be the poorer for it.

What does give me a degree of hope is that the response to the consultation — which which can be answered here until Friday 1st September  — seems to have been pretty robust.  Let’s hope it is enough to persuade the Department for Transport to change its mind.  Here is my own response:

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing in answer to the consultation on the proposed general closure of railway station ticket offices.  I am afraid I must express my strong opposition to these plans.  Of the many reasons for my opposition, I would like to emphasise three in particular.

The first is that this decision, if implemented, will result in discrimination against passengers unable to buy tickets via machine or online.  Not everybody owns a computer or smartphone; not everybody has Internet access; not everybody is able to use a ticket machine.  We would not withdraw assistance for disabled passengers on the grounds that only a minority uses a wheelchair; surely the same logic applies here.

The second is that the decision is simply impractical.  I cannot see how it would be easier, let alone more economical, to sell tickets in ‘other areas of the station’ as the consultation poster puts it — anywhere other than in a ticket office.  How would cash be handled?  How would tickets be printed?  How could anything work in bad weather?  Has the safety of railway staff been taken into account?  The current proposals leave the practicalities entirely unexplained.

The third reason has to do with the common good.  One tremendous advantage of the railways is that they can undertake to look after their passengers, including those less confident in travelling.  The railway can say, ‘We can look after you.’  The reassuring and knowledgeable presence of the ticket clerk, in an accepted location, is a vital part of this.  It seems unbelievable that this should be dismissed so lightly.  Removing ticket offices will make the station environment far less welcoming, lower the confidence of travellers, and ultimately harm the railway’s prospects.

I am a strong supporter of the railways and use them more or less daily both for work and leisure.  I understand that growth in revenue is an urgent priority and am sympathetic to the railways’ efforts to balance the books.  However, I am astonished and dismayed by the severity of these proposals, which risk doing deep and lasting damage.  Other measures, such as increasing ticket inspections, should be tried first (on the Sutton loop in south London, in spite of travelling more or less daily, I have had my ticket checked only once in the past two years).  Indeed, the railways should be making ticket offices more efficient by expanding the number of services they offer, such as by equipping them to sell advance fares, which are currently only available online.

I would be grateful if you would pass these points on to Govia Thameslink Railway and to urge them in the strongest terms to reconsider their plans.

Yours faithfully, &c.

Updated 26th July 2023 in the light of the extension of the consultation deadline from 26th July to 1st September. 

Rondel for Sea Sunday

Unidentified tanker in St. George’s Channel in the Irish Sea, August 2013

Psalm 106 (107): 23–24 

These men see the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep; 

Little else they see who keep

Watch and faith with brothers’ accord.

Neither wealth nor fame they reap,

But they have a different reward:

These men see the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep.

They see more than log-books record:

What it is to watch slow, steep

Heaps of water leaping aboard;

They see tumble-tumult and broad 

Dazzling seas and comets’ sweep;

These men see the works of the Lord

And his wonders in the deep.

Today is Sea Sunday, an annual ecumenical day of prayer for seafarers, whose hard lives are often out of sight and out of mind, but on whom we depend for trade and prosperity.  The Catholic charity for seafarers is Stella Maris, the ‘Apostleship of the Sea’, which was founded in Glasgow in 1920. 

Ruth Gipps: Symphony no. 3 in Sweden and the U.S.

On the 3rd April the Portland Youth Philharmonic Orchestra gave the United States première of Ruth Gipps’ sparkling and lyrical Third Symphony, and they have been generous enough to upload their performance to YouTube.  This followed another magnificent rendition of the Third, the Swedish première, with dedicated Gipps revivalist Rumon Gamba conducting the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

It follows, too, hot on the heels of the revival of the Fifth, first by the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra and then in London by the Westminster Philharmonic.  I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the latter performance with some friends; it was a tremendous experience to hear it live — a symphony rich in beauty, rescued from obscurity.  I have to say that I found the first movement too fast, so that some of the details, and the excitement, of the tremendous climax was lost — but I cannot really complain, since a live concert performance of the symphony seemed unthinkable only a few years ago.  The programme notes were excellent, incidentally.

All this means that all four of Gipps’ mature symphonies have received concert performances on both sides of the Atlantic.  The first remains something of mystery — rejected or withdrawn because it was an early work?  The clarinet concerto, written when Gipps was nineteen, has been performed and recorded, so there seems no reason to assume that the symphony is not worthy of the same.

It has been such a heartening experience to see Ruth Gipps’ star continue to rise over the last few years, and to hear all these wonderful new recordings — including four live performances.  My only slight anxiety is that the revival is in some ways politically motivated, that is, that Gipps is being promoted more because she was a woman who suffered prejudice than because she was a superb composer.  It is certainly true that she experienced prejudice as a woman composer and conductor, and that the Gipps Revival helps to right that wrong, but the prejudice which seems really to have cut her to the quick was what followed later; the complete rejection of her tonal style of composition at a time when atonalism was all the rage.  This aspect of her story receives less attention.  The lesson to be learned from her life is surely that we should avoid prejudice of all kinds, including those of the fashions of the time — to which the musical world seems surprisingly prone.  If we revive Gipps’ music on political grounds alone, she will lapse back into obscurity the moment the Zeitgeist passes.  But if we judge her as she herself would have wanted to be judged — by her music — then she is assured of a permanent, well-deserved place in the pantheon of twentieth-century British music.

Some Grounds for Catholic Optimism

The Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, began his New Year message for 2022 by comparing two different kinds of hope.  One he called the ‘pragmatic version’ — in which ‘a secure present’ gives us confidence to ‘look forward to an uncertain future’ — whereas the other, he said, was the ‘theological virtue’ of hope — ‘the capacity to face an uncertain present’ because, beyond it, we trust in an ‘utterly secure future.’  

Most of us in the Church would recognise this distinction.  After all, the first kind of hope, which we might also call ‘optimism’, is in distinctly short supply these days.  As the memory of the old faith drains steadily out of our cities and civilisation, as the tenets of the Creed are forgotten one by one, as forces mighty as Goliath yet insidious as the serpent conspire to hobble the Church and smother the Gospel, the psalms of lamentation come easily to the lips: ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’  And so we cultivate the second kind of hope, setting our sights and our hearts on the ‘utterly secure future’ of the kingdom of Heaven.  We brace ourselves for the ‘Long Defeat’, as Tolkien put it, in sure hope of the Final Victory.

But what if even earthly hope is not altogether lost?  For although this nurturing of Deep Hope is fundamentally the right approach to our situation, it nevertheless carries with it an understandable temptation: to give up on the immediate future altogether, and thereby to miss such possibilities as do in fact lie before us.  We are not Albigensians; we should not turn our backs completely on the world.  The Resurrection of Christ was as earthly a thing as it was supernatural, and changes the present moment as much as it does eternity; its implications are not only cosmic but comprehensive, changing the world not only in general but in detail, and from within, not from without.  Our everyday lives on earth are shot through with a new life-force — the Word, whispering perpetually into every crisis, ‘This is not the end — for I was, I am and ever shall be.’  Even in these bewildering times, there is an onward path to tread.

Cardinal Vincent in his message goes on to point out the ‘middle ground’ that exists between the two kinds of hope.  His point, if I understand rightly, is that we need to develop an intelligent combination of both: Deep Hope in the long term; courage and fortitude in the short.  Even if ‘optimism’ is hardly the first word we might use to characterise our immediate outlook, it has to be an ingredient in our approach.  Even a dash will do.  As we heard from the prophet Jeremiah (of all people!) one Sunday last year:

A blessing on the man who puts his trust in the Lord, with the Lord for his hope.  He is like a tree by the waterside that thrusts its roots to the stream: when the heat comes it feels no alarm, its foliage stays green; it has no worries in a year of drought, and never ceases to bear fruit. 

(Jeremiah 17: 5–8)

‘Never ceases to bear fruit’…  Mainstream opinion-formers may think the Catholic Church obsolete, deluded and contemptible, but we must not give the slightest impression of believing them.  Certainly we should be prudent in the deployment of our energies; absolutely we must attend to the deep and inner roots, but in the drought of the coming decades we must never lose confidence that the Church will indeed ‘never cease to bear fruit’ — because she retains countless ways to prove herself essential not only to her own members, but to our whole society.

What sort of thing do I mean?  Here are some ideas.

1.  Pro-life victory is certain

I am absolutely confident of the eventual victory, on earth, of the pro-life movement.  This might sound absurd, given the present total dominance of the abortion lobby in law and politics.  All the same, of the innumerable logical contradictions at the heart of the revolutionary secular-progressive project, this is the hardest to sustain, and indeed can be sustained only by shrill campaigning and a constant flow of cash.  A succession of scientific discoveries is steadily and consistently vindicating the Church’s position, and, sadly, so is the testimony of ever greater numbers of women as to the offence done by abortion against their dignity and happiness.  The strength of the pro-choice lobby is nearing its high water mark; it has little further ground to gain; it is already having to become defensive of its establishment position.  Its members are beginning, rightly, to recognise the possibility that they will, as the phrase goes, ‘lose the narrative’ to the joyful and energetic pro-life message.

March for Life, London, September 2018

I do not mean to sound complacent — after all, the cost in unborn lives now runs at over two hundred thousand every year in England and Wales alone — but I am not being complacent; I am being confident.  As with the trans-Atlantic slave trade two centuries ago, the whole outrage is likely to end abruptly, even unexpectedly, with a sudden anagnorisis and revulsion at the horror.  Unless our society is completely overtaken by nihilism, a point will be reached at which the injustice can be denied no more; someone at some point will ask, in a loud enough voice and in a way which will suddenly be listened to, why (for instance) we see hardly anybody with Down’s syndrome around any more; will ask why we uphold the rights of God’s animal creatures, as we should, without extending the same defence to our own unborn children.  When the tide does turn, the sheer consistency and integrity of the Church’s pro-life position, as well as her record in providing for mothers in need, will stand her in good stead when it comes to establishing a new and authentic culture of life.

That is one concrete reason for hope in our age, but still stretches the definition of ‘optimism’ a little far.  What about today and tomorrow?

2.  Fire-power isn’t everything

It is worth remembering that we still have great resources in the nature of our presence in society.  Secular progressivism is on the warpath, and hardening into a religion of its own, having at its disposal many organised shock-troops with strident and persuasive voices, and tightening its grip on our culture.  But if the Church seems not quite able to match this sheer fire-power, it is not because we lack good arguments or articulate ripostes.  It is because we have other things on our plate as well.  Unlike the cultural revolutionaries, we have always been concerned about more than mere propaganda.  The Church may be in battle, but she is not merely a battleship: she has to be a rescue vessel and a hospital ship and a flagship all at once.  She cannot be expected to swivel and aim her guns as adeptly as a purpose-built destroyer.

What is more, so much of the strength of our witness actually lies in our silence.  This is true in two senses: firstly in the simple fact of our not going along with propaganda or slogans, and secondly in the positive quality of the silence of our sanctuaries.  Especially these days, when moments of peace, let alone peace by oneself with God, are so hard to come by, precious indeed are the physical refuges of our churches amid the howling cities.

Our strength lies, too, in the aspects of the Church’s life that never make the headlines: her presence in hospitals, in hospices, in prisons, in homeless shelters, in ports, in refugee camps, in the armed forces, in universities, in schools.  And her charities: the tireless work of CAFOD for overseas development, Aid to the Church in Need for persecuted Christians, the St. Vincent de Paul Society for the homeless, and so on.  All those things that are never chalked up on the scoreboard of history: the Masses, rosaries, hymns and prayers; the confraternities, the prayer-groups, the pilgrimages, the devotions; the ‘ecclesiolae’ or ‘little churches’ of families holding their own day after day.  The kindly priest in the lit confessional; the Mary-garden under the railway arch; the soup-bowl in the homeless shelter: in all these ways the Church, with that gentle tenacity of hers, persists in living the ‘life to the full’ that her Founder promised.

The cultural revolution tends to be keener on the commanding heights of the culture — the law, the government, the arts, schools, universities, and the apparatus of civil society — than on the welfare of ordinary people.  This tells us that it is only really interested in power; that for all its capacity for intimidation it is necessarily brittle and lacking foundations, and that its strength, though incontestable for the moment, will prove ephemeral.  The Church’s appearance, by contrast, is no mere veneer.  Under the surface she is true to her word.

3.  The Church comprehends the new and pluralised Britain 

Another opportunity for the Church in years to come, one in which it stands as good a chance of success as any other institution apart from the Crown, is in making sure we fashion a harmonious society of the new pluralised Britain, and preventing the emergence of any division or mutual alienation.  Relatively few things can be said to unify us as a country these days, and certain fractures are emerging which the Faith is placed uniquely to heal.  What but the Christian imagination could even conceive of bringing into serious dialogue, say, the secular liberal on the one hand — whose instinct for mercy, though misproportioned, echoes a distinctively Christian idea — and the observant Muslim on the other, whose concern for justice, codified by the bracing tenets of Islamic law, testifies to a sincere attentiveness to God’s will?  Because the Church understands this paradox of justice and mercy, knowing how to temper one with the other, she can, I think, foster more fruit from such a conversation than anyone else.

And where else but within the Church can the demographic changes of the past fifty years be not only reconciled but harmonised convincingly with the deepest roots of our society?  To take only one of countless examples, consider the Tamil pilgrimages to Our Lady’s shrine at Walsingham, which I understand attract the largest numbers of all the pilgrim groups.  In this village in the heart of rural Norfolk, a place of pilgrimage since before the Norman Conquest, an ancient English devotion is unified with a Tamil one.  There is no contradiction between love of England and love of neighbour; there is simply one faith, one Church and one Lord.  Thus the world-wide roots of today’s pilgrims are entwined with the very depths of England and Englishness, new Britons follow in the footsteps of medieval kings, and all pilgrims throughout the ages are unified in peace and goodwill.  For many immigrants and their families and descendants, the Catholic Church is a ‘home away from home’ — and yet it has been here in England, waiting for them, it seems, since England’s very beginning.

Tamil Pilgrimage to Walsingham, Norfolk, 2016

4.  New alliances amid the crisis of meaning

Then there is the crisis of meaning: the alarming and deepening void at the centre of modern life, and, which is often even more horrifying, all that is rushing in to fill the void.  Only a decade ago the New Atheists were trumpeting the new dawn of a fanaticism-free secular age of cool rationalism, but now their vision seems completely unequal to the socio-cultural forces of our present time — forces which I am convinced are also spiritual.  As R. S. Thomas wrote,

In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,
then to the recreation of it
in their own spirits […]

Amid a loss of confidence in our institutions, our culture and even ourselves, a tremendous spiritual famine has suddenly declared itself: often vague, often outwardly hostile to formal religion, but unmistakeably spiritual in character.  This manifests itself in some obvious ways — the growing and understandable popularity of ‘mindfulness’, or the emergence of whole new academic fields such as ‘Loneliness Studies’ — but also in some more alarming forms: in the new ideologies sweeping every public institution, our blind faith in progressivism, and the many genuinely troubled young people.

Writers such as the essential Mary Eberstadt have long been observing how sixty years of aggressive secularism have been incubating this situation — but plenty of non-churchgoers are also noticing the crisis.  They share our alarm at the widespread subjugation of truth and reason to personal desire, and many are realising that even the Church may have something interesting to say about it.  We can and must do our best to repay that confidence; if we do, we may find ourselves entering into some new and fruitful kinds of dialogue.  (I say this from personal experience.) 

5.  The crisis of gender, though tragic, is a particular opportunity

One friend with whom I regularly enjoy such conversations recently brought to my attention a recent lecture on freedom of speech, one of the BBC’s annual series of Reith Lectures, by Nigerian-born novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  At the core of this address was an appeal for a ‘coalition of the reasonable’ to maintain the standards of public debate.  She was speaking mainly with reference to the extraordinary behaviour in recent years of many advocates of gender theory, who have often been using outrageous tactics in order to advance their contentious cause, organising social media storms, releasing personal information, and even hounding their opponents from their jobs.

Adichie’s is an invitation to which the Church can and must respond positively.  We believe in reason and know that civil and reasonable debate are essential to our whole society — so there is an opportunity here for some real solidarity and co-operation.  In forming such alliances we do not have to pretend to agree where we disagree, but there is no reason why an edifying exchange of ideas should not take place.  The ‘reasonable secularists’ can discover our sincere interest in truth and reason, while we might draw some inspiration from their strength of purpose and concern for accountability and integrity.  Maybe, in finding ourselves on the same side for once, the discussion will be more constructive than it has been for many years.

Perhaps, too, at a relaxed moment, the conversation might turn to higher things, and to the spiritual dimension of the crisis of our time.  We might mention Benedict XVI’s insight that as well as reason we need faith, and that the two are not only compatible with but absolutely essential to each other.  We might make the point that the sense of meaninglessness from which so much of the crisis has stemmed corresponds to a deep reality about ourselves — that our longing for meaning is not some vague and inconvenient appetite, nor some functional or dietary need to be satisfied by the appropriate vitamin, but is a sign of the deepest truths about ourselves: the spiritual truths.

Even so, the urgent task remains to offer charitable but robust collective opposition to gender theory, which even now is doing irreversible damage to many confused and unhappy young people, as well as offending in a particular way against the rights and dignity of women.

6.  The Re-evangelisation of Romance

Another obvious mission for the Church is also one of the most dangerous: to confront head-on the ongoing melting down and recasting of marriage and the family, and to re-evangelise the sphere of romantic and marital love with the fullness and beauty of the Church’s teaching.  

Here, as with abortion, the post-Sixties revolutionary movement is visibly running into difficulties, and beginning to fray amid its own contradictions.  But its power is still tremendous, and its price exacted mainly on the young — who secretly, often even without knowing it themselves, long to hear the truth.  They long to be told what deep down they suspect: that all men and women were made for each other’s mutual respect and friendship, not for sullen rivalry; that the unique kind of friendship which is life-long marriage, the real thing, is no fancy but the gold standard, given to us by God for our flourishing; that a bride and bridegroom really are worth to the other nothing less than the gift of a great cosmic vow, one equal to the weight of an entire human life and strong enough to sustain the multiplication of new life; that such a vow is no mere formality, but something we long with all our hearts to make and to fulfil.  Youth seeks truth — the truth about ourselves, a truth which is written in our bodies as well as in our souls — and the Church, with teaching that is as beautiful as it is true, must be there to meet their longing.  Our culture is near enough rock bottom to hear it.  

We will often run up against wild rage and hatred — for those entrapped by darkness hate and fear beauty and truth — but there are millions of others waiting to be captivated by the high mission to which the Church calls them.

As Mary Eberstadt said in a recent interview,

Catholics should be proud — in the right way — of all these unpopular teachings.  They’re only unpopular for the moment, and […] they resonate with the human heart.  That again is to our advantage as we try to press this case.

This is one of the few spheres of life in which many people will still acknowledge a spiritual dimension, while often remaining sceptical about the form of marriage.  We are in much the same situation as those who argue for rhyme and metre in poetry: our task is to show how the form gives sense to the feeling; how the rules and vows give the underlying human impulse the sense and the strength to endure.  Against the pessimism of liberalism, with its fear of commitment, with its cynical assumptions about loyalty and perseverance, many will be surprised and inspired by the frankness, the freshness, the bracing realism, and, yes, the sheer optimism of the Church’s vision.

7. How hope works

I have one final remark on the way hope itself works, and where to look for it.  Whether pragmatic or theological, hope does not usually come marching over the hill; it grows fierce and green in unlikeliest places, as tenacious as grass or wildflowers.

One hot day a few years ago I was riding down a cycle path alongside a heaving A-road in south London, gritting my teeth against the noise and hostility around me, when the path narrowed and, seeing a child of about ten or eleven coming the other way, I braked to let him through.  To my complete astonishment, he very sincerely and deliberately thanked me; I hadn’t expected it and was too stunned to respond adequately.  There, uncrushed by the juggernauts and the tyres, defying the smirking warlords of the road, a tiny counter-witness, a green shoot of hope — something so vital, so ‘original, spare, strange’, that it offered a stronger riposte to its surroundings than perhaps the boy knew.  Like Lovejoy’s garden in Rumer Godden’s book An Episode of Sparrows, hope grows and germinates in defiance of overwhelming forces, even in spite of ourselves, in the ‘fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been…’

In the same way, as we should know from our own lives — and at Eastertide of all seasons — the vindication of the faith is with us, on earth, in this very hour.  ‘Christianity works,’ as Douglas Gresham, C. S. Lewis’s straight-talking step-son, once said.  It works in our lives, in every detail of our lives, even if the wider world is ignoring it for the present.  

---

I am under no illusions: this is a very uncertain and unsettling age, and things will not be easy for the Church for some time.  Many of the opportunities I describe may only be born of various crises and amid great suffering: it may be that we can be optimistic only to the extent of being poised to respond to a crisis.  It is also undeniable that the Church as an institution — in Europe and the West at least — has been severely weakened in the past fifty years — partly by mockery and marginalisation from without, partly by slacking and scandal from within.  But the Church’s members on the ground are chastened and made wise by crisis; we are all, clergy and laity alike, more alert, less complacent, and more capable of giving an account of ourselves than we have been for some time.  And in an age when all institutions are struggling to win trust, the Church is again as well-placed as any other to recover her integrity and a visible authenticity.

As far as external threats go, the Church can handle crises far better than she can uncertainty and apathy.  Our very foundation began with an utter catastrophe which was gloriously and outrageously inverted into triumph.  We have the ‘utterly secure future’; we have the Final Victory — but the near future is worth fighting for as well.  Keeping courage, then, means keeping courage in the short term as well as the long; today and tomorrow, this hour and the next, so that, in a happier time, our descendants will remember and give thanks for their forbears in faith, as we give thanks for ours.

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?…
Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.
For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion:
In the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock.  

(Psalm 27: 1–5)

Pope Benedict at Hyde Park, September 2010.

Ruth Gipps: Fifth Symphony in the ascendant

The Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Ruth Gipps’ Fifth Symphony next Saturday, 20th May, at St. John’s Church, Waterloo, London.

In the whole sorry tale of the indifference and disdain shown — in official circles at least — towards the music of Ruth Gipps during her lifetime, it is the episode of her Fifth Symphony that seems to sum up the sheer bone-headedness of it all, the blindness into which fashions and fads can lead even intelligent and cultured people.

Gipps’ fifth symphony, completed in 1981, ought to have been the crowning point of her career.  The successful broadcasts of her second, third and fourth ought to have counted for something, yet Gipps had found each of these progressively more difficult to secure — and now, as she was to tell the music agent Alan Poulton, ‘the BBC promptly rejected the 5th,’ adding, ‘I am still made to submit works as if I were a student.’

In 1982, writing to Malcolm Arnold, she hinted that she had rather expected as much.  Where BBC broadcasts were concerned ‘I wait for years,’ she told him, giving several examples of apparent heel-dragging and long delays even for works approved for recording and broadcasts.  ‘So now I write for what I like,’ she said, which in the case of the fifth was a large force with plenty of winds and percussion.  She programmed the symphony in a 1983 concert given by the London Repertoire Orchestra, which she had set up to offer experience and support to newly-qualified professional players.  A recording exists of this concert which, though fairly scratchy, certainly conveys the quality of the music.  ‘It has a great big first movement,’ she told Arnold —

[…] a little tiddly 5/4 intermezzo, a rather difficult scherzo with a cello solo going up to the B above the treble clef in the trio […] and then a very odd finale – a Missa Brevis for orchestra – no singers, but tunes that fit the Latin words if you did have singers; and two listeners without scores said they could follow it through. I’m not a Catholic, by the way, but was brought up on the B minor [Mass by J. S. Bach] at College.  [1]

I think it is Gipps’ greatest symphony, the magnificent first movement being perhaps my favourite of all her musical utterances.  It has all the Gipps hall-marks — the lyrical mistiness, the angularity and spikiness, the occasional audacity in the treble register — but has less of her usual optimism, being shot through with a particular tang of sorrow, a bittersweetness, which I think adds to its power.  It also contains one of the most beautiful solo passages in all of English music.  And yet, after that first performance, the symphony — inexplicably, bewilderingly, frustratingly — fell into complete neglect and was not performed again.

Until April this year, that is — and once again it is the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra which has ridden to the rescue.  Having given the U.S. premieres of the second and the fourth symphonies, they have now added the first American performance of the fifth to their trophy cabinet.  Their director of music Adam Stern has shown a singular dedication to Ruth Gipps’ music, and in the case of the Fifth it turns out that he had to recopy the whole score and all the orchestral parts, which had been lost.  The six months it took him coincided with the first wave of the Covid pandemic — it is nice to see that something good came from a time that was very difficult for many musicians.

His faith in the music is absolute.  The symphony bears the influences of Malcolm Arnold, Vaughan Williams and William Walton — to whom the work is dedicated — and yet ‘there is nobody else who could have written this symphony but Ruth Gipps,’ he told his players.  ‘It has a new life, and we are giving it life.  We are giving the second performance of this piece — Yes, it’s big, it’s big.’  He also hinted at plans in the pipeline for a studio recording and CD release on the Chandos label, and also mentioned that ‘another orchestra’ needed their parts immediately after the Seattle premiere.

Excitingly for Gipps fans on this side of the Atlantic, the orchestra in question is the Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra, which is performing the symphony in London next Saturday, 20th May, at 7.30 p.m. at St. John’s Church, Waterloo.  This is the first British performance since 1983, and only the third ever.  Further details and tickets are available here.

Many thanks (as I have said so often before!) to the Seattle Philharmonic for their courage in programming Gipps’ music and the fine musicianship audible in the clips below — and to Maestro Stern in particular for his dedication and single-mindedness in promoting this too-long-neglected composer.  Also to whoever digitised and uploaded the recording of the Fifth onto YouTube.  As for the London performance, I cannot wait.

Sources:

[1] Alan Poulton, ‘Malcolm Arnold and Ruth Gipps’, in Beckus (no. 100, Spring 2016), retrieved 13 May 2023 from https://www.malcolmarnoldsociety.co.uk/malcolm-arnold-and-ruth-gipps/

[2] Norman Lebrecht, ‘Ruth Gipps gets a US Premiere’, (Slipped Disc, 15 April 2023), web resource, retrieved 13 May 20223 from https://slippedisc.com/2023/04/ruth-gipps-gets-a-us-premiere/

Vivat Carolus Rex

I must say, I thought the Coronation was marvellous.  The service in Westminster Abbey was a feast of uplifting splendour, rich in mystery and poetry, and shot through with that serious joy that characterises all the most meaningful occasions.  Careful thought had clearly gone into every aspect of the ceremony; the symbols were deep and rich, he prayers weighty and resonant and the music absolutely magnificent.  

Several things particularly moved me, often moments of simplicity: the chorister’s fearless opening greeting to the King, recalling the ‘boy bishops’ of the Middle Ages, and not without the hint of a challenge — “Your Majesty, as children of the the Kingdom of God, we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings” — and the King’s simple, correct reply, correct because it echoed Christ, “I come not to be served but to serve.”  Later, just before the anointing, there was the sight of His Majesty in a simple white shirt — for a moment visibly a man like any other.  Then the veiling by the embroidered screen, so as show that some things are still too sacred even for television’s eye.  There was also the Byzantine chanting which accompanied the presentation of the Sword of Offering and the Spurs and the Orb — a remarkable combination which opened up an especially startling glimpse into the depths of time. 

Some criticism of the service has been made even by sympathetic commentators, lamenting the absence of certain traditions, or finding the mystery diminished by the zoomed-in, high-definition television pictures.  But I must say I found myself decidedly heartened by it all, above all by its explicitly Christian nature.  I know that we in England are very good at pretending to say one thing and then actually doing something quite different, but in times like these, when so many ancient things are simply being openly jettisoned or reinterpreted to suit our modern whims, it means a great deal that such serious prayers were still said, that our country was still committed, at its heart, to God, and that an ancient covenant was sealed afresh.

Decorations in Cowley Street behind Westminster Abbey (whose towers are just visible in the background), 7th May, 2023.  The house in the foreground was formerly the residence of Lord John Reith, first Director General of the BBC.

Those of us who are in favour of all this — who believe in the quiet wisdom of constitutional monarchy, in its gentle ceremony and stateliness, and in the particular way of loving Britain that it gives us — are well aware that we are keeping a flame alight in an age when many people miss its purpose.  The Coronation gives strength to this flame.  It seems to me that it matters less whether we matched the full splendour of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in 1953 than that a moment of this kind should have happened at all.   The outward form of Coronations is bound to change over time; the important thing is to make sure it is done, to maintain the links in the chain, to keep faith with our forebears and hand on our society intact to our descendants.  That the Coronation was so resplendent, should have remained so untainted by plastic secular modernity, and been enjoyed by so many is, in some ways, secondary, though I did savour every minute.  Given the kinds of outrages against our culture that seem to have become a matter of course in public life, I think it was a moment of hope, and a great counter-witness to the irony and cynicism with which so many shut their hearts against the the sacred or mysterious.  It was also a highly intelligent blend of our ancient inheritance and the reality of modern Britain: for instance, I thought the contribution of the other Christian leaders (including our own Cardinal Vincent Nichols) and the leaders from other religions was handled with great dignity and respect.  All people of good will should have been able to find some encouragement in the Coronation: an opportunity for national unity and strength in troubling and confusing times, a chance to step outside our own age for a moment, and an affirmation of higher ideals.  The memory is a treasure to which I will return in the months and years to come.

And not only to the service itself but to everything that surrounded it: it was wonderful to see the flags on the Mall on Sunday, and also for our parish Youth Choir to sing at a special Mass on the Bank Holiday Monday, an occasion for which our auxiliary bishop joined us.  This is no coincidence, but part of the ripples of goodwill that radiate from events like this, quietly building up ‘bonds of connexion between persons’, as St. John Henry Newman put it.

The Mall looking splendid

“It is deep within our Catholic spirit to love our country and to pray for our Sovereign,” said my Archbishop John Wilson at a Solemn Mass at the Cathedral on Sunday. “King Charles and Queen Camilla have set themselves to be servants after the heart and mind and example of the Lord Jesus.  We seek to do the same and to pray for Their Majesties and for our lands.” There is a strong sense, expressed not least in Cardinal Vincent’s excellent loyal address, that the Church is behind the King; and that the King knows this.  There is a hard road ahead for our nation, and much cause for concern in the increasing violence and the sense of a weakening of civil society — but last weekend a clear sign of the attitude with which to overcome these problems, in both the short term and the long.

Forgive the repetition: I cannot resist posting Saturday’s rendition of William Walton’s Coronation Te Deum…  Andrew Nethsinga conducts choristers from Westminster Abbey, the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace, Truro Cathedral, and the Methodist College in Belfast, with Sir Antonio Pappano directing the orchestra in the organ-loft. 

God Save the King!

And so we come to Coronationtide, as the great Eleanor Parker reminds us to call it — though no wonder we had forgotten, as this is the first for seventy years.  It is quite something to sense once again, as we did at the death of the late Queen, the heavy mechanisms of state and of history swinging into motion, though this time to music in a major, not a minor key.  Again I sense, and savour, an older, deeper Britain rising almost to the surface.  I expect this sensation will only intensify as we approach Saturday, and that during the ceremony itself we will feel very close indeed to high voltage — as if we need only reach out to touch the charged cable of history, leading all the way back through the centuries, to the very beginnings of our nation.  

It is strangely ironic that the remarkable gift of the late Queen’s long reign — her very longevity and personal constancy — may have distracted us from the even greater length of the thread of historical continuity to which she belonged and of which even she represented only the final stretch.  Now that her son is King, there is a curious change of perspective: where until last year we might have marvelled that the Queen had been reigning since 1953, now it is easier to notice again the remarkable truth that our monarchy itself goes back — well, all the way to Alfred (let us not dwell on Cromwell), and English Coronations to King Edgar in the year 973.  Our perspective suddenly broadens out from beyond the lifetime of a single individual, remarkable though she was, and recognise that even she (as she knew quite well, and often implied) was only a part of something far older, far richer, far deeper.

Now Charles is to be crowned King, and with his crowning a new chapter opens in our national story.  It is not like 1953, when the young Queen Elizabeth shone with gem-bright optimism amid war-weary and soot-bleared, though dignified, Fifties London.  It was a brightness she kept till the very end, so, without at all making a criticism of her, it is an interesting and by no means unpleasant change to look now to the more pensive, even melancholy figure of Charles in her place.  He is a philosopher king, a man who seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, and in that sense he is the man of the moment.  These are troubled times — troubled spiritually, as we are beginning to realise; a time of uncertainty and fear in which so many are struggling to find their bearings, and in which there is a great, yet widely unanswered thirst for the eternal consolations of goodness, truth and beauty.  Judging by the manner and aesthetics of his reign so far, Charles seems to understand these things.

Not that those aesthetics are at all gloomy or pessimistic — their dignity and beauty and confidence have lifted my spirits considerably.  The Coronation emblem (above), which I think is simply magnificent, is the work of Sir Jony Ive, who previously designed iPhones for Apple.  Everything from the King’s own dress-sense to the new commemorative stamps (also splendid), from the splendid programme of music for Saturday’s service and the newly-embroidered screen which will veil the moment of his anointing from the prying cameras — all doubtless done with the King’s own close involvement — communicates the prizing of slow craftsmanship and care, as well as a deliberate combination of rootedness and inventiveness: just the kind of the old-fashioned modernism, or futuristic traditionalism, to which I would willingly subscribe.  Some commentators have been excitedly wondering aloud if a ‘New Carolean aesthetic’ is on the cards in art and design; I for one hope it takes off.

Finally, in this era of rapacious and often vindictively revolutionary change, it is a deeper consolation to me than I can express to find that the Coronation service itself remains consciously and explicitly a ceremony carried out before God.  In recent days I have read some online comments, albeit favourable to the Coronation, along the lines that ‘the ceremony is bizarre, but it does our society good’.  But why must everything be ironic and detached?  What if it is serious; what if God might actually hear the prayers addressed to Him in His house built for that same purpose?  What if He takes our Coronations seriously because He takes us seriously —  and the health of nations, and the welfare of His people — and will, in truth, help the King to fulfil his promise to uphold this country as a place of peace and justice?  Then Coronations matter very much indeed.  That is why on Saturday I shall not only sing, but pray quite sincerely —

Thy choicest gifts in store

On him be pleased to pour,

Long may he reign.

May he defend our laws,

And ever give us cause,

To sing with heart and voice,

God save the King!

William Walton’s ‘Coronation Te Deum’, written for the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.  Sung here by the Wayneflete Singers and Winchester Cathedral choirs with the organist Timothy Byram-Wigfield and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Hill.