Always a very good listen, but I was especially delighted with Marilynne Robinson being a guest on Andrew Marr’s BBC Radio 4 program “Start the Week” this morning. Here it is at Spotify (also available as podcast at Apple.)
Andrew Marr talks to Marilynne Robinson and Rowan Williams September 28, 2020.
Robinson discusses her new novel in the context of her wider work and concerns in the modern world; both the sacred and the profane. Her co-guest is Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who speaks on the 16th century Benedictine monastic tradition; subject of his recent book The Way of St. Benedict, and its relevance now.
With such a pairing one expects the sacred to win out, but Marr ensures the more profane does not come up short. For me, at least, a very nice start to the week.
Brought to my attention while listening to the Times Literary Supplement Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon podcast here isan essay by A.N. Wilson in the TLS (a free article if you’re lucky or with subscription) that starts and ends with Josiah Wedgwood IV, a descendent of the potter and a Labour Party MP from 1923 until his death in 1943. Clearly here a name known through the familiar colour and motif of Wedgwood porcelain, but to me also because I recall Virginia Woolf sharing some gossipy, interesting stuff of another variety regarding “Jos.” in her diary. What I can’t remember are comments about his passionate political commitments (and make herewith a note to myself to look into this – Leonard Woolf would have surely had sympathy with some of his opinions).
For Wedgwood was certainly a radical sort – leaving the Liberals behind him in the interest of a commitment to the working class fight, standing almost alone against the eugenics zeitgeist, ever alert to the dangers of fascism, supportive of Zionism, Indian independence – and, in respect to the Prayer Book controversy, opposed to Anglican matters of cleric, communion or anything else being disputed in the Houses of Parliament. It was not the substance of the 1928 Prayer Book revisions (foremost being that opponents saw in it an opening towards Catholic practices) that Wedgwood railed against (as an agnostic he presumably didn’t give a twig!), rather that as a matter it had no place in a secular establishment.
Title page of the 1662 Prayer Book
For the record: the bill brought forward was defeated two times in the House of Commons, soon thereafter the Bishops took matters into their own hands and the 1928 version was authorised after a fashion, the Church of England has its own governing Synod (1969) and must no longer seek parliamentary approval, and the infamous 1928 book and its 1662 precursor exist together; neither absolutely adhered to in practice amidst a variety of forms of worship.
And what concerns A.N. Wilson (Wiki informs: that he is a biographer of “the potter”, that his father was in fact managing director of Wedgwood – oh, and that he is Emily’s father!) is just how Protestant is Britain now, and that leads to curious considerations; including whether at the next Coronation Service the new monarch will swear an oath to uphold the Protestant Religion. And what can that possibly mean in a nation comprising so many beliefs and in an increasingly secular society?
