The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 103. Archbishop of Canterbury: Faith, mental health, and the future of the Church

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

What does the Archbishop of Canterbury suggest for bridging divides in conflict zones? What are the Church doing about declining spirituality? How was it leading the country through the death of the Queen and the coronation of the King? Rory and Alastair are joined by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to answer all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. Welcome to the Restis Politics leading with me, Alice Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart.

And if it sounds echoey, it's because we're in the crypt at Lambeth Palace. And the reason we're in the crypt at Lambeth Palace is because today's guest is the Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop, welcome. Good morning, Alastair. Good morning. Rory.

Now, we like to kick off with what Rory calls the backstory. And your backstory is phenomenally interesting. Because your... Well, let's just tell us. Tell us about your parents. My parents met when my mother was working as a secretary for Winston. Churchill when he was in his second time as prime minister, and she was with him from 1949 to 55, and they met in 55. My upbringing father had a curious series of backstories,

which were very hard to discover, and I've only recently found out a lot more. But they met, and he persuaded her to marry him. And they went off to Baltimore, they eloped the day before Churchill announced his retirement. And in April 55, and I was born in 56, and they separated soon after returning from honeymoon and divorced in 1959. So one could say that it was not an entirely successful marriage. But then you discovered later in life that he was not your biological father? Yes. I mean, all this has been in the press, I'm not breaking any secrets, but in 2016, the telegraph, Charles Moore at the telegraph, sat next to someone at a dinner who said her late husband, Anthony Montague Brown, who'd been deputy,

private secretary at number 10, wanted, had been my real father. And Charles looked at some photographs and decided that was reasonable. I couldn't see it, but there you are. And came to see me and I said, oh nonsense, let's do a DNA test. and just prove you're wrong. And then we didn't waste time on this. And a couple of weeks later, it was wholly weak. And I was in the middle of a youth club in Sittingbourne or somewhere, and there was a huge amount of noise around me,

and my phone just buzzed, and I had a quick look, and it was from Charles. So I thought, well, I can't resist looking at that. And it said 99.93% charts that Anthony Montague Brown was my father. And that caused a little kerfuffle. It was during... Quite a big cuffer, I would have thought.

Well, for you? No, not particularly for me. I was relatively unmoved by that. What happened was the telegraph was very nice and said they wouldn't publish anything for a couple of weeks. And that gave me a chance to ring my mother and have that rather awkward conversation

that one doesn't want with one's parents about their sex life. You know, you don't want to know about your children and you don't want to know about your parents. So, you know, did you know Anthony Montague Brown, mom? Yes, I knew him well, dear. And so on and so forth, you know, all this sort of stuff. And she did a remarkable statement when the news came out saying it was a drunken evening. She was an alcoholic.

And but the result was wonderful, she said. You know, parents always think that. And we announced it. There was a slight panic when they wondered whether the Lord had been changed that said, as it used to say, that bastards can't be bishops. But they discovered it had been changed in 1952. And so that was all right. Your mother, who I thought was wonderful. Yes, you knew her quite well.

She was a neighbour. So I'd see her walking her little dog. That's it. Tell us a little bit about her because it's very difficult reconciling somebody who I was very, very fond of in a bio-domency with this sort of vision

of this moment in the 1950s that conceived you. Tell us a little bit about her. Well, she her parents, her father was in the British Indian Army and her mother, my grandmother, came from

a long line of business people, Indian civil service, all kind of journalist at one point one of them started the statesman paper in India and going back forever Napiers and that kind of thing

and in 1939 before the war began my grandmother went back with my grandfather to India and they were unable to get back. Well, she was unable to get back because of the submarines and the war's starting.

And so she lived with my great uncle, my grandmother's brother, Rab Butler. And so she was brought up by him in the war. It's quite a life of this. We had Churchill and Butler already. Yeah, we're at Churchill. And just for the younger, this is, sort of legendary politicians. So this is a connection to... Yes.

Yes. I mean, he was home secretary, chancellor. Foreign Secretary, acting Prime Minister for over two years and all kinds of things, but never Prime Minister. So she then, after the divorce, she had to make her own way. And she was sort of what we'd now call PA, executive assistant DA. She worked for loads of fascinating people, including someone called Sarance Chain, who was a Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry at Imperial London. But the drinking got on top of her, and I remember that very well. And she, it was, I mean, she told me she'd go to bed with a glass of whiskey by her bed. So the first thing she could do when she woke up was have the

whiskey. And eventually her parents, not her parents, my aunt said, you're not welcome in anyone's house unless you stop and change. And she admitted herself to a mental hospital in South London and spent several months there, came off the bottle, found faith in Christ there, or refound. And then she became a probation officer and then eventually on the parole board and very involved in prison reform for the rest of her life. And it was interesting, you use the phrase your upbringing father, because remember the last time I interviewed you for GQ, you couldn't, you said you were struggling to find the kind of words for all this, but, but he was also an alcoholic.

He was also an alcoholic. So both the people raising you as a young child were quite serious alcoholics. Very serious. What was that like for you? Chaotic, very scary, sometimes father. Towards you? Towards you, towards your mother? Both. generally disorganized and dysfunctional. It got worse. He could for a while control it and then by the time he had a stroke

when I was 12. And after that he was, you know, he'd start drinking in the morning and drink through the day. I was at boarding school, but in the holidays, I spent a lot of time with him and ended up, you know,

in the classics, a teenage thing of when I was there, I was sort of doing as much of the caring as I could. Did he know that he wasn't your biological father? I think he wondered. I've never said this before, but I do think he wondered. I remember one time when he got very drunk in a restaurant and was shouting out,

at least you're not my only child, even if you are my child. So I wonder. And did you ever, you had that difficult conversation with your brother? Yes. Did you then go into a... it in depth or did you just move on? Because by then you were a prominent public figure. Yes. It was during the Brexit campaign, which you'd happily remember. Oh, I'm so happy. And I remember saying to the Coms Director here, well, everyone's in the middle of this campaign. Nobody's going to pay any

attention. And she said, you have no idea. A relief from Brexit, the papers will bite your arm off. And I said, well, I don't know what I'm going to say because my identity is in Jesus Christ, not in DNA. So this doesn't change who God knows that I am and who I've always been. And she said, well, actually, you've just, that's the line. You've just given me the line. So, yeah, for me it wasn't unmanageable,

and we didn't go into much of the detail, not least out of concern for my stepfather. And you mentioned that your mother re-found her faith. Yes. And you went through a similar process. You've had times when you've not necessarily had the faith that you now have. Yeah, until I was 19 or so.

Definitely not. And then I went to, I spent seven months teaching in a bush school in Kenya, what they call a Harambe school near Mount Kenya. And I saw all these people with nine. nothing who had a deep faith in Christ. And the head teacher of the school had been interned. It had been an internment camp under Mau Mau in the emergency. And he'd been interned there, but, and that was only 15 years earlier, but he was just someone,

he held no grudges, no bitterness. And I was so struck by that that it sort of set me off on this journey towards faith. Tell us a little bit just before we move on to the next bit about what it was like as a teenager. I mean, it feels very difficult, feels very sad, that description of parents and alcoholism and boarding school. I think, well, you went to boarding school, I think, yes, you definitely, the same one. Yes. And the, I think one of the things I remember, and I see with children in difficult situations around the world and pastoraly and when I'm dealing with things here when I was in a parish. The children are quite good at generally at just taking,

dealing with things. I just assumed this was life. I didn't feel it was unfair or anything. I just thought, well, that's the cards I've been dealt, and there's not much point in grumbling about it. There was a point when I was about 16, 17, when it was really extreme with my father. and then I did feel that this was very, very difficult. Was it almost a relief to be away from home? Yes. It was much safer, but I don't know how we've already found school, but I didn't enjoy it very much.

They were lovely people I got friends from then, but it's just a very unforgiving environment, I thought. And then you went on to university? I went to Cambridge, yeah. Yeah. And by then, presumably, you were beginning to explore your faith more. Yes, a little bit, and running away as much as I could, until the beginning of the second year, when I sort of running away, I ran into God. Or I found he was lurking around the corner.

But she didn't immediately become a clergyman. You weren't. Oh, no, no. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had a look at clergy life and decided no. And you had friends who went straight into the chair? Yes, absolutely. Can I remind you of your final school report?

Well, you would have to remind me because I can't remember. He said he clearly hasn't got the brains for the city. Yes, that's right. He may not even have the brains for the army. He might try industry if they'll take him. So clattigeton is it. That's good. That must have you great for yourself, Steve, as you went out to the wider world.

Yeah, that's right. Obviously, given that you got into Cambridge, there's something a bit odd about that report. Well, that was the term after I got into Cambridge. They were all, including, I mean, they were all very surprised. No, I finished Cambridge. My last year, I tried doing the Foreign Office exam, failed to fill out the form successfully on three occasions, and decided I wasn't going to make it in the exam. So whatever the interview process was in those days.

So through a series of coincidences, I was invited to go to an interview with an oil company. I mean, this is very 70s and very different. Well, oil companies are really good people there, were they? Well, they, it was a job. Yeah. The one, nobody else was offering me a job. I mean, you've got to get a job. And because there wasn't anyone else around who was going to employ me.

So I flew over to Paris for an interview. I thought the company was called Gulf. Fortunately, I read the annual report on the way over, and it was called Elf, which is an entirely different company. I really didn't know very much. And the first three questions from the group Treasurer were what do you know about oil? I said, nothing.

He said, do you speak French? And I said, not really. And he said, do you have any financial training? I said, no, none at all. He admired your honesty. He gave you the job. Well, he's very tough number two, who's a good old French oil man offshore and all, said, then he won't bicker up. We better employ him.

Can I just find out. You said to Roy that God was sort of lurking. And you've told me before that to have the sort of, tell me if I got this right, there has to be an element of revelation in the journey of discovery that you've been on and millions of other people have been on. So what was that revelation and why were you a little bit shy and coy about it at the time? Well, it wasn't very fashionable. I was trying to be cool and becoming a Christian was definitely not cool. And are you, the two of you roughly the same age?

Almost I didn't. In 1957 I was born? 19656. And you were both at Cambridge. So was it cool being into God when you were at Cambridge? I wouldn't have thought so, no. No. No. No.

I was interroaring. Were you into rowing? No. I don't think that was cool either. I thought sort of, you know, getting out, getting smashed out my brains every night was cool, but I was probably wrong. Well, I really can't comment.

I don't think I pass crossed. No, they certainly. Which college were you at? Keys. Oh, you were next door. And in Kenya, there was a sense that of the real, I met in the people there, people who knew God not by dogmatic understanding, but as a personal encounter. And it was back at Cambridge in my second year that someone explained that to me and what, that on the cross and in the person of Jesus from birth to resurrection and ascension, we see who God is.

and God comes to meet us, we don't find God. And we cannot know God except by Revelation, and that's in John's Gospel. Why doesn't he pick on everybody? I think he invites everybody, but he gives complete choices to whether you say yes or no. And it's an offer that he's open to anybody

to find the love of God in Christ. and people come to that in very, very different ways. Can I interrupt? Sorry, this seems a terrible time. But, Elsie, this is something that interests you, but something you've always found very difficult. I mean, you don't find religion very easy. I notice when you come in, you're polite,

but you're also a little bit uncomfortable in these surroundings. Tell us a little bit about your feelings about faith. I've told Justin before I'm a pro-faith atheist. I like faith. I tend to like people of faith but I can't do it intellectually even when I try And were you when you were younger

A sort of campaigning atheists Did you were you quite sort of No My parents were both They were Presbyterians Went to church every Sunday Drag me along Your sister's a

My sister who Justin has met is a Lovely Very very very very deep belief Deep faith So yeah And I as Justin knows. I love talking about this stuff. Yeah, and that's fair enough. I mean, it, but I can't do it intellectually. And I keep thinking, well, if it is about this revelation thing, I've had lots of

things happen in my life, but why has that never been one of them? And actually, when, sorry, this is maybe getting too personal on you, but when you had your own journey out of alcohol, and that often for people, involves an element of faith and religion, but it didn't for you. No. No. Did you do the 10 steps? No. 12. 12, sorry. I may have, well, no, because step one, essentially you're handing... Well, step one can be agnostic

that you accept you're not in control of your own life. But the higher power... The higher power, yeah. Those who started AA with the 12 steps, the higher power was God. Yes, absolutely. And the A was started by a Christian. You were never drawn to that or interest in that.

There was something, no. Love them, though. Great support of A.A. So am I. But for your mother, that was part of the path. Absolutely essential. And she was sober for how many years? I was 12 when she came off the booze and she died last year.

So I went there, 1968 till 2023. Long time. Very long time. But she still went very regularly to air. And I'm sorry, one thing I was trying to get at is, did her character change? Because, of course, the person that I met was, I mean, sort of. textbook, charming, cheerful sort of grandmother who was lovely to my children and everything. But that's difficult to reconcile with this vision of somebody in your, when you were younger.

She was always enormously able intellectually, never believed it, but she was. And she was, her character changed. She was liberated by faith. she was free to be who she was best at being without the booze. Okay, thank you very much so far. We'll take a break and when we come back, maybe we'll talk a bit more about politics. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Samrick here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away

and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise,

people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing,

which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. And we'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1970. a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about.

We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts.

Now this podcast, as you know, is called The Rest is Politics. What's your relationship with politics? Particularly, sorry, I read but the Winston Churchill. I mean, there's sort of some stuff of politics and your mother's life and background. I've always been fascinated by the, sort of strict life of politics. And I read history. I'm absolutely intrigued by politics.

And I've just been reading Henry Kissinger's profiles of leaders, which he wrote when he was 99. I'm fascinated by the characters. In this role, you have to be small people. political. You have to be aware of the influences, the currents of opinion, the, you have to get to know politicians. I like getting to know politicians. I usually like them, the vast majority. Overwhelming majority. I recognize very often a deep sense of service and a deep sense they want to do the right thing combined with the difficulty of the levers of power, the

difficulty of, as you've said in a previous podcast, that you get into number 10, it's rather like this job, you discover most of the levers aren't connected to anything at all, and the ones that are connected, when you pull them, something completely different happens to what you expect. And the church is not an organisation, it's an institution, it's a collective, and there are, it's not a hierarchy in the sense that you can give orders and they're obeyed, because they're normally not, and you're a fool if you give them. And the church is very political in that sense. How do you weigh up on a sort of capital P politics? How do you weigh up when to intervene and on what? You have a platform. You could intervene all the time in particular issues, but you're

quite careful. You were very forceful about the Rwanda bill. You've had some pretty strong things to say about the Middle East, austerity, poverty. Brexit, you kind of, you dip in and out. Usually you get slagged off by the right when you do. But what's your thinking process in terms of how often and what? First of all, my first rule is don't unless you can't avoid it. That means you must have historically judges that go in for what's called pietism. So, you know, there's the spiritual world and there's the physical world and you keep the two strictly separate, end up as tools of the current political environment. There's a wonderful phrase by Gibbon that I'm always

quoting that in the decline and fall, he says the various religions of the Roman Empire were to the peoples all equally true, to the philosophers all equally false, and to the magistrates all equally useful. So you have to be aware of that danger. But there are certain things. I am a conservative in reading the Bible, seeking to see that the church influences the world in a way that God has revealed to be good, particularly in the person of Jesus Christ. And one of the key things in that is human dignity and the common good. And so, when the Rwanda thing happened, which was on Monday Thursday,

Priti Patel announced it. And we had a meeting online on Good Friday of the senior staff. I don't do it just casually. We have great sort of consultations. And we went round the meeting saying, and I said, do I have to speak on this now? Because it's Easter.

And the answer was, yes, you do from everyone. this is so the way this is structured is so inhumane we must put a line in the sound sorry cliche but there we are and so I put two paragraphs

into my sermon on Sunday it happened to be relevant and I remember because I speak from an iPad and I saw the paragraphs coming up the page and I was more and more gripped with terror as they came up because I knew this was going to

cause havoc, which it duly did. One of things that's unusual about your life is that you became very involved in peace building, engaging in countries and conflicts, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, but elsewhere to, you know, remember learning a lot from you about Nigeria, for example, when I was the Africa minister. Where did that place you, I seem to be sort of playing the role of bringing you an answer ago, but where do that place you, for example, in relation to the Iraq war, looking back on that? I was working in Coventry at the time at Coventry Cathedral on peace building, and I had

long discussions with the Bishop of Coventry at the time, and just to show that the church is not particularly deaf wing, both Rome Williams and Bishop Colleen, the Bishop Coventry, who sort of led on this sort of thing, were strongly opposed to the war. I was too easily influenced by some of the things I was reading and hearing. Partly thanks to him on my right. Oh, I really couldn't comment. He's looking very poker-faced. Beedy.

Beedy. I'm getting a beady look. But I think what really showed me was when I went to Baghdad a few weeks after the invasion. And there was one British soldier there, a major general at the headquarters in the the palace and there were a very large number of US soldiers, not nearly enough, but a very large number. And when I saw how they were equipped and what was happening in the streets, I remember saying to a colleague, this is going to be Vietnam, this is going to end in disaster and withdrawal, and it's not going to be one. Because of the, because of the, equipment and lack of preparation.

Well, the moment, there was a very significant moment. That sounds very small. We were in a restaurant. It was in the days before the Greensome was established. And we're in a restaurant. There was quite a lot of shooting going on around, but it was a very nice Assyrian restaurant. And this soldier came in, a sergeant, full battle dress,

there was an arm of personnel carrier outside. He came in, I don't know, with a colleague. And he saw us sitting there and came across, and he saw that we had satellite phones. And he said, my colleague over there has just had a baby. His wife's just had a baby. And he hasn't had a chance to speak to us. So now I'll give you $10 if you'll.

I say, well, forget the money. Just ring her. So his colleague rang. We went out a few minutes later. The guy was leaning against the armor personnel carrier, tears streaming down his face, talking to his wife and hearing his baby. Very moving.

And I said to them, delighted, but why did you need? my sat phone. Couldn't you just ring? He said, oh no, we were told everything would be up and running and we wouldn't need any special communications. I thought, what world were these planners living in? And as we know now, they were living in an illusory world, Rumsfeld and Co. And looking back that whole age, I mean, that must have been very formative for you, because that was... It was hugely formative. And that was you, Coventry, that's you becoming a bishop, that's you leading up, But that's Iraq, that's Afghanistan.

You're touching on the Middle East peace process. There's Libya, there's Syria, there's Yemen, all happening in this sort of... And there was chaos in northern Nigeria. There was the rise of Islamist activity, and particularly in Nigeria with Boko Haram. And you became archbishop in which year again? Thirteen. So take that... So it's very interesting decade, isn't it?

From the invasion of Iraq to you becoming archbishop. And I think a disastrous decade in the sense that there was such a gap between the good things happening in domestic policy, fall in way. I was also chairing a hotel hospital trust at one point. And in Warwick, and the pressure from the Labour government was enormous from Whitehall to get the list down. And they did come down over the period. there was huge investment in the NHS, it was good, until, obviously, 08, 9 and the recession. And there were so many good things we could see as our children went through the local state schools that standards were rising.

But foreign policy, the theory of which, after Tony Blair's Chicago speech, I really thought was incredibly worked through and clear in its alliance, particularly with the government in Washington at the time just didn't seem to be cutting it and didn't seem to have enough grasp of history. I mean, I can't say a word about Afghanistan and I've never been there, but I do remember thinking this will be the fourth Afghan war for the Brits. And the last three we've either lost or withdrawn more or less intact, but we've never achieved what we wanted. So why does anyone think, and the Russians were beaten, why does anyone think this is a really good idea?

Not that I had any better ideas, I mean, but so, you know, and government is impossible. So it was a very strange period, and I remember going to a meeting in Washington, I was asked to brief the incoming US ambassador on Nigeria at that one of their briefing meetings that was organized by the CIA, a bunch of analysts there,

and I, asked questions about this and they all applauded, said, we're saying this. This is not going well. But one of the other speakers said that what we are going to see is a sort of metastasizing of the cancer of extremist Islamist action. And they particularly were threatened by northern Nigeria. And indeed, we saw as Iraq successfully under Petraeus managed, they managed to crush the extremists. They then scattered all over the place, and you've got new uprisings, particularly in northeastern Nigeria.

If people want to hear Broie and I talk for Iraq about two hours, and we'll put it in the newsletter some time ago. But can I stay in that region? You did recently intervene in the argument at Israel and Palestine. Yeah, after the ICJ, yeah. And what were you weighing up before deciding to comment on that?

And the quote again, Alsa, what is it he said? So you said that you basically said that Israel were denying the Palestinian people, dignity, freedom and hope, and the ending the occupation was a legal and moral necessity. First of all, that comes out of a historical

sense of history, which I'm a sort of geek, on that since 1945 we have seen this extraordinary change where we have a nascent but still fragile international legal order and

very fragile as we know at the moment and it is deeply in the interests of everyone in areas of fragility that that is obeyed because what you can take advantage of at one point will be done to you

in due course and so the ICJ rulings the fact that the UN has said that the occupation of the West Bank and the occupied territories generally is illegal the seizing of land from Palestinians annexing or just stealing all these things are wrong but we are in a place where both Palestinians and Israelis and Jews in Europe, Jewish people in Europe, are enormously traumatized by what happened a year ago. And with very good reason, are very well aware that they all round them. There are groups, Hispullah, Hamas, who wish to eliminate them, not just push them back to their borders, but to remove them. So you've got a series of groups, none of whom have hope or security for the future,

none of whom have populations that can look to the future and expect improvement. I mean, Rory, you know more than me about this because you spent a lot of time there. And where the consequence is continual renewal of extremely violent and absolutely horrendous. conflict. And the Christians are being crushed between the up and the nether millstone of these two groups, absolutely ground fine, and are disappearing. I was talking to a patriarch in northern Iraq yesterday. His population has virtually disappeared. It did as a result of the Iraq invasion. and the withdrawal and what happened after that. Bethlehem used to be majority Christians, about 5% if that.

The same in East Jerusalem, Hebron, you name it. The Christians are disappearing. And I talk to our wonderful Archbishop in Jerusalem, Hussam Nol, constantly, or listen to him constantly. And when we're going to do something like this, I talk to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilus, to the Latin Patriarch, Pitsbella, and to other experts, and, of course, to Assam. And I take their advice. And they're very cautious. They live in the midst of this, but they say, this cannot go on.

These attacks in the West Bank. So you spoke to all of them before you made a statement. Yeah. I'm in constant touch with them. If they were here, what would they want to convey about their experience and the experience of Palestinian Christians particularly? The experience of Palestinian Christians is of diaspora and exile. In certain places like Gaza, Hamas systematically persecuted them since they took over.

We have to be honest about those news, pretending otherwise. We're down to one church, I think, left in, which is Latin. It might be two, there might be a Greek one as well, in Gaza, which had a church when St. Paul was around. I mean, you know, this isn't imported churches. They're the originals. And they would say they live in communities that are shrinking, that are under enormous insufferable pressure. And the only way for that to be reversed,

and just out of sheer humanity, they long to see a stable, established peace. And enormous pressure from Hamas and Gaza, also under pressure they would say from the occupation? Particularly, yes, from the occupation and particularly from the settlers. You mentioned Bethlehem. What does it say about faith, God, religion, that that place, which is oozing with more religion and religious history than any other part of the world?

Power from Jerusalem, probably. Okay, and that region, I'm talking about the whole region, that that is the place that currently has the most division, the most violence, the most hatred. And I guess, as his representative here, what's God doing about it all? For me as a Christian, the answer is he's living in them, because there's nothing new about this. It was like that when Jesus was strolling around Galilee and Judea at the beginning of the first century. it was we find the same levels of violence all the way through the growth of the church. And the answer they always give, and I was reading Peter's first letter this morning where he's

talking about this to people under persecution and violence, is what does God doing about it? He's living in the midst of it, he's sharing it, he's experiencing it, and he is being crucified unjustly, and he is, He overcomes death and gives us what Peter calls an eternal and inextinguishable hope. It's very hard to feel the hope right now. If you limit it to what we're seeing, I couldn't agree more, and I would say that's exactly the same all around the world. I remember a very formative experience on the borders of Sudan and South Sudan in the Nuba Mountains

where there's been fighting for a very, very long time. A lot of Christians in the Nuba Mountains, but it's in Sudan. There was a very difficult Islamist regime for very many years there. And there'd been particularly heavy fighting from the Sudanese army attacking as about six, seven years ago.

I remember walking along a road, coming upon a group of refugees with a little boy. And the little boy was seven. And he was sitting by himself. and I said to some of the others, is he one of your children? They said, no, he's lost his parents.

And if you want to look at what war means, that is one of half a dozen images in my mind of that little seven-year-old. And where does he find hope? Where did we find hope when we looked at him? I mean, Alistair, you're quite rightly putting your finger on the greatest question that faces all faith is how do you explain human suffering

and the intense cruelty of this world which incidentally politically I think we forget I think we set up political systems on the assumption people are good rather than on the assumption that they'll go wrong and where people have power they go wrong including archbishops

that is your kind of general view I believe in sin yes in that people are biased towards sin and therefore need forgiveness, renewal, being born again, if you like in a biblical phrase, finding the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to change them. Is that clear? Can you forgive Vladimir Putin right now? It's God's job to do the forgiving. It's mine not to hate and to pray for him. Do you think God forgives him? That's up to him and God. It's above five pay grade. You've done a loss on peace building. Not much successful.

But tell us, as we look from Sudan to Palestine to Russia, Ukraine. What have you learned about what sometimes works? I've written a book about this, about reconciliation. I think there are two or three key lessons. One is it's all about relationships. The biggest task in reconciliation work in peace building is to enable people to see their enemies as human beings whom they hate rather than things. Dr. Martin Luther King said once, I will destroy my enemies by making them by friends. It's quite a famous thing.

I'm not sure he was the first one to set. Desmond Tutu said the same. So the first thing is it's all about relationships. And people involved in peace building are only catalysts. Peace is built by the people in the war, not by outsiders telling them what to do. It involves key moments like peace treaties or ceasefires, but they are merely a step. It's a process that takes generations. And we can see that in Europe since 1945.

It was the genius of the European Union, which from the French and the German point, as Alastone, you know very well, was never about trade fundamentally. It was about young Germans, young French, young English, etc. not Brits, not killing each other on the battlefields in northwest Europe. That's the point of the European Union. So reconciliation, it starts with careful listening, presence, careful relationship building, relieving need, taking risks in being with people and bringing them together, and being willing to be alongside them in bad places, spending an awful lot of time in rooms listening to people.

not very clamorous, and resourcing them to keep it going. Now, we've been very, I think we've been far too soft on you. We need to, we need to tough enough a bit now. I want to go back to our... So apart from theodicy, which means the justification of God in suffering, you've... Yeah, but that's your job. And illegitimacy, if you can't answer that.

If you can't... Probe mercilessly into my life. Yeah, yeah, apart from all that. So I wanted to go back to our interview in 2016. That's a long time ago. It is a long time ago, but there's a couple of things we discussed, which I'd like you to talk about. about now. The first is, the first one's a bit easier. I asked you how you would feel about being in the

job if the queen died and you said, I hope it doesn't happen on my watch. Well, it did. Yeah. So I want to know what that was like and the coronation. Yeah. And the second question I asked you, which you really struggled with, and you were honest to say you were struggling with it, I asked you whether gay sex was sinful and you said, I don't have a good answer. So I wondered if in the intervening seven years, you've got a better answer? Eight years. Eight years. Sorry.

We all made mistakes. Very reassuring to think that, you know, he was one of the Prime Minister's main advisors. Can't quite add up. Number's not a strong point. Yeah. It's a lot of other strong points. Okay, first one. I got the call that the Queen had died when I was in France.

We were packing up. It was at the end of the holiday. we drove through the night and looking back as to how I reacted which I was just shock because of course one knew it was going to happen

but it was completely surreal for all the reasons that you've said and you've both said that none of us can remember we were all born after the queen became queen there is only there was only the queen And then it was 10 days of very hard work.

The funeral was well prepared, but particularly preparing the funeral sermon was because you have four minutes, which is not a lot of time. And working very closely with the dean at Westminster who's phenomenal. Westminster Abbey was so brilliant and organized. And so were the army. And the government, you know, the government, everything just happened. That was one experience. And there were just moments in it.

One of the most vivid for me was when the Queen's coffin was brought to Westminster Hall for the Lying Inn State. And I was at the door of Westminster Hall to meet the coffin. And it came, and you could hear in the distance the crowds applause. And then as the coffin reached them, you could hear it sort of went, and rose and almost a sigh. And it was led, the cortege was led by the horse cart, dismounted, with their swords reversed over their shoulders, sabres, whatever they carry. And it was afternoon, I could see their shadows before they arrived, these huge shadows, and then they came past in a slow march with the drum.

And I suddenly, it was that moment, I realized, this is reality. Second moment was the funeral itself, where there were more heads of state, over 200 heads of states and state and government. Probably the largest gathering, I guess, almost ever. And watching President Biden come in for security reasons, he came in last. And he came in with a British colonel escorting him. Just as the George and Victoria cross procession came past, and the colonel, he was about four feet from me, the colonel whispered to him what he was, and he immediately straightened up, did this, you know, put his hand across his chest, as a respect for them. And then getting up in the pulpit and just seeing this enormous number of people in the Abbey with all these famous faces. And just before the survey started, the BBC said, we said, we think there'll be.

billion. So that was, it was four actually, but it was, that was so, such a solemn moment. I mean, solemn, I can't find a word for it. It was so profound that this was a change of moment in history. And the coronation? How much did you rehearse for the coronation? Started in January, twice a week, in one of the rooms upstairs, marked out to the same scale as the east end of Westminster Strabby by the high altar, what they call the theatre, and twice a week with members of staff coming in and I was always the archbishop and they'd draw lots and put a picture around their neck and so my wife heard one day she was she was in the office and she had two people saying how was the rehearsal once it was how was the rehearsal this morning

He said, oh, well, they're getting better. He's getting better. Because, I mean, it was really complicated. And then the first person said, who were you? I was the king. And then in the last couple of weeks, rehearsals every day with the king. With the last week, it was with the king and the queen the whole time. and then the ceremony very alert and keyed up very attentive, very present,

but by that time we'd rehearse so much that thanks to my chaplain as well, whispering Turner, go down there, do this, do that. Most of the, apart from two mistakes, I got it right. What were the mistakes? After putting the crown on the king's head, I bent down to make sure it was level. And if you look on the film, you can see me sort of ducking down, which really looks stupid. And the other mistake was, I forgot to look at the king to get permission to crown the queen. Did you notice that?

I didn't listen. I could see you from an angle, but I don't think I got that subtlety on that. No, you're meant to, before you crown the queen, you're meant to get the king's permission. They feel quite mine. I don't think you should beat yourself up about those. No, it wasn't too bad. And the crown came to me the wrong way round. So if you look, you can just see the...

Oh, that would have been bad, because you would have put it on wrong way round. I would. Yeah. But you spotted it? Yes, because I knew the shape of the jewel that should face me. And I've been repeating it to myself all week. And you can just see the dean gives me the crown,

and we both look down, and I go and roll my eyes. And then we go, wow. Oh, well done. Well done. That was funny. And let's now turn to gay sex. I do all the time, really, in the life of the church. And do you have a better answer yet?

Yes, I do. You want me to give it. I'd love to do to hear what it is. Yeah, this is, if there was an equivalent question when Tony Blair was in office and he was in an interview, he was asked an equivalent question, You'd be standing in his line of sight going, well, there's your me over there, but he's looking very relaxed. No, he's not.

He always looks like that. What the Archbishop of York and I and the bishops, by a majority, by no means unanimous, and the church is deeply split over this, where we've come to is to say that all sexual activity should be within, a committed relationship, and whether it's straight or gay. In other words, we're not stopping the idea,

we're not giving up on the idea that sex is within marriage or civil partnership, or whether marriage is civil or religious, and that therefore we have put forward a proposal that where people have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage, equal marriage, under the 2014 Act, they should be able to come along to a church and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together. So we accept that. There are, as with all things in the Church of England, is always a part. And there are some principles we're trying to

work on is that because of conscience, no one, no priest or church should have, should be compelled to have these services. Now I think personally the services are, this is a long way from church same-sex marriage but there is no doubt that the church is deeply profoundly divided on this.

You personally haven't, are you doing those blessings? I've said I won't out of responsibility for the Anglican Communion where in many parts of the world it's absolutely unacceptable. And that's where you basically have to be a policy. This is where you have to be a politician. Because you've got very different views in a very different church.

You have countries around the world where people, even if they don't have it, want the death penalty for people who, as they say are gay. Particularly there's less attention to the G, the B, etc. And you have countries where basically it's legal and the churches, involved in taking in presiding at same-sex marriages. But we're saying no compulsion on anyone. Churches may opt into doing these. If they don't opt in, they don't do it. And it is a simple service of welcome and blessing.

And even that has resulted in an enormous breakdown of relationship. in a really sad way, not only across the communion, but in the Church of England. For those who are conservative, we keep, I am absolutely committed to them having a full and undoubted place in the Church of England. We're not a political party. We don't chuck out people who disagree because it's God who brings people to faith. And every Christian is a brother or sister in Christ. Including people who want the death penalty for being gay.

Yes. Yes, I may disagree with them and say they're wrong, but you might disagree with members of your family and say they're wrong, but they're still your family. And you might really disagree with them passionately, but there's still your family. And Christians are a family. Church England is extraordinary because you're holding together a coalition, even broader, it seems sometimes, in the Labour Party. I mean, it's in terms of the different views within it. We've talked about... What about the Conservative Party?

Is that broader or less? I don't. That's five different parties now. That's not even one party. Because we've talked about gay marriage or gay sex. It's also true. I understand, or I'm sort of navigating my way through this in my own church in London, that you have some very complicated views on people taking different positions on women bishops.

And yet, as you say, what you don't do is say, you know, here's our, I don't know, our clause for a moment or whatever the equivalent. is this is the high highway instead of which you the tendency of the church in England traditionally has been to hold together a very broad range of beliefs rather than insist on one. It is. I mean, my general rule to put it in crude terms is that, for instance, people can become bishops if there's a real sense they're called to be a bishop and if they can say the creed without crossing their fingers at any point.

That's not a very theological way of putting it. In other words, you're in favour of women bishops. I am strongly yet. I introduced the legislation that made it possible. Yes. But some of your colleagues are not. Yeah, there's a few bishops who are not. Of the Darsan bishops are two at the moment out of 43, and three or four more who are suffragan bishops. And some priests who don't want to have a...

Yeah, there's quite a significant substantial number. And there's not just the high church, but also the evangelicals who are against the authority of women to teach on biblical grounds. And how do you get around? So let's say you're a parish priest and you, for some reason, disagree with women bishops. How does the Church of England get around that? The Church of England says that if your church agrees through its PCC, you can have oversight from a bishop who agrees with you.

How are you going to reverse the falling numbers? Are numbers falling? No, the last couple of years they've gone up. And have they gone up with younger people, older people? Both all, everywhere and every part of the church. But you're still a lot lower than you were, the height of the church's kind of stages. Oh, good heavens, yes.

Height of the church is we're around, of church finger, we're around 20% of the population. We're now 1.6, 1.8. Wow. But last year we grew 5% overall and 6% in young people. Okay. And I guess my final question relates to the other side of the Atlantic, and that is, how do you feel that Donald Trump, who doesn't strike me as the most Christian living person,

how do you feel that the Christian evangelical movement appears to be so supportive of him? What has happened there? There's a very interesting figure which says that in many parts of particularly the Bible Belt, you know, 60, 70% of people will say they're evangelicals and about 8% go to church. regularly every week. Now, that may be wrong, but certainly the number I saw recently from a church survey. I think there is a very deep sense or in the states, as there is here with the culture wars, but much more in states that American exceptionalism remains deeply embedded within evangelicalism. This is the church. This is the country that is called by God.

you know, city set on a hill and the things going back to the Reagan era, which we used to think. I mean, during the days of empire, you'll find plenty of British leaders saying that. You never had Republicans saying that Reagan was kind of Christ reincarnated. Some of these people say that about Trump. They don't quite go there, but they say he is a prophet from God, yes. But I think that's deep down. It's because they want stability.

They want a stable society around them. We see the same here and across Europe. I was talking about this in Paris yesterday and at a big gathering. And they, I think one of the most interesting sociological things of the last 40 or 50 years, 60 years, is that every major faith has seen a rapid growth of fundamentalist thinking. and you can say that my own view that part of that is economic and sociological, which is about resistance to the rapid changes in culture, in technology, and biology in life, in how the world is organized,

and feeling a deep sense of threat, which is one of the reasons that at our last gathering of global bishops, we set up a science and technology global group to work on ensuring that our tens of thousands of schools around the world, because it's one of the big things we do, and over 110 universities, actually get to grips with modern science and technology. It's not just the big global North economies, but this doesn't become another gap between the poor and the rich,

but every country, where our 165 countries, has the opportunity, and we're teaching this stuff. how to engage with it and be a faithful question. You know I've talked about lots of things, and one of them is mental health. Indeed. Because I always get the feeling I'm very good at spotting. Yes, fellow...

One becomes that. Fellow depressives. And of course, you've also got your history of parental alcoholism and your daughter who's had this amazing... She really tells her story about depression as well. So I just wonder if you could reflect a bit on that. Yeah. I mean, I think we're in a really interesting place.

I am, I recognize more and more that it's something like asthma that you, I'm asthmatic. You live with. Mental health, mental ill health catches you by surprise sometimes. A few weeks, a couple of weeks back, a few, a bit more than that, just in the middle of the night, an overwhelming sense of, you know, that sort of darkness that one gets into. And so I'm conscious of my ups and downs. I'm very strict about taking catalyst. And they definitely help. And I have, I'm very open with my wife about this,

with Caroline about this, I think you're very open in the family about it. You must have people who you can say, this is a bad moment, this is really bad. so that they prevent you harming yourself. I went to a terrible, no, it was beautiful, but tragic funeral, not that long ago, of someone who in his 40s had taken his own life,

practicing Christian, and just overwhelmed, I think, just one of those moments of being absolutely overwhelmed. And you're nodding, I presume you know what that, feels like and at the you know I go through the ups and downs and certainly if I allowed myself to read my own Twitter feed that would not help me at all if it would do a lot of harm I believe it when people Sam completely you know the worst Archbishop in history as someone said do you oh yes but did you believe that when all the time or just when no not all the time um not all the time but certainly it's one of the things that you know but in a very I don't know if this makes any sense to you

in a very distant way it's not me believing it about myself it's sort of seeing me out there and thinking what a klutzy is I'm aware that when I'm depressed I get bad tempered and so I have to spend time saying sorry for people and this you mentioned self-arm if you've been tempted but I've never done it I mean I don't know how does any of that make any sense to you. All of it. Hmm. And it, it, but we have to recognize that there are ways of treating it and nobody needs to go through it alone.

And you need friends, you need people who you can be absolutely honest with and say this is really bad. And I think one of the best things in the last few years is a number of people, and you were one of the earliest ones. who by being open about this enabled it to be less stigmatizing and the royal family being very good about this, very open.

And it's very frequent. But as I say, I mean, if I get, I woke up the other night with an asthma attack. Well, I didn't lie there thinking, oh dear, this is awful. I reached my inhaler and dealt with it. it's there's a parallel there don't just sit there or lie there or whatever it is you're doing thinking about it talk to someone get help and and i've had to learn that and i find it

even this conversation i find quite sort of embarrassing in a way do you oh yeah well i don't like to talk about myself so yeah but the um but there's that and and i just think i suppose there's a voice within me says you're the Archbishoprici of Canterbury, what reason have you got to be depressed? Ah, but that's stigmatizing, you see. Why shouldn't the Archbishop of the Contraby get depression? Absolutely. I think that's absolutely right. And quite a lot of my colleagues say, you're the Archbishop of Canterbury, say, why shouldn't you be depressed? Let me attempt you to talk about what faith, what Christianity can offer the world. It's a really good question. hope and the resources to live a fully human life, to quote, I think, Irinaeus,

a person is never as complete as when they are complete in Christ. That's from the very early centuries. And I've misquoted him slightly, but I haven't got my text. And I think with modernity and post-modernity, or ultra modernity, we've lost the sense of the fallenness of human beings, which applies to every human being. So we over-demand and over-accept,

and we are not prepared to forgive standards that do not come up to what we've demanded, which is much more than we could do. I mean, you look at so many things with political leaders. Everyone says, oh, well, they've done this wrong, they've done that wrong, and the paper's then going for talk, poppy syndrome and cut him off and say they're hopeless you know and they give them a nickname and

it's happening at the moment it happened with Rishi it happened with tony Blair it happened you you go on and on and there is no sense that everyone gets things wrong and is forgivable that there is forgiveness now that Christianity brings at its best the capacity Christians bring the capacity from God to see fallenness and to forgive because they are part of that fallen nature. You see it in what Paul writes and Paul writes. And within that, we desperately need that. How on earth do you get reconciliation if taking a long time over it, you don't have a sense of being able to forgive what's being done to you? My final one is some thoughts on how you relate to politics and power.

we've got very striking examples from senior clergy in Russia seeming to endorse Vladimir Putin's attack on Ukraine. Presumably you have interesting, positive and complicated examples from your predecessors as archbishop. Absolutely. I mean, how do you think about this? I think about this first by looking back at history and see where we got it wrong. The German church in the 30s supporting Hitler, apart from Bonhoeffer and the confessing church was small. minority, all the bishops in the House of Lords in 1832 voting against the Great Reform Act and against the abolition of slavery. So it's admitting where we've gone wrong. I mean, the slogan

at the moment for the vision of the Church of England is simpler, humbler, bolder, and centered on Christ. Now, these three words slogans, they get everywhere, don't they? There, they get everywhere. It's like education, education, education. Oh, that's the one. That could be yours as well. So you have to have a sense of history. You have to recognize that in every age, the church is unable to see its own faults as it should. So there has to be a constant willingness to learn. It wasn't only voting against the abolition of slavery. I was in Jamaica in the summer.

The church actively supported slavery in the Caribbean. So we have put aside a hundred million pounds, which is less than we gained from slavery, for impact investment in areas damaged by that, not as reparations, but as for the future. So you repent in technical language by doing the opposite. You are self-aware of your own fallibility, and I have to be intensely self-aware of my infallibility, and therefore you consult and listen to all kinds of people inside the church and outside it, as for instance we did on our, when we intervened around housing in 2022 with a very well-received report, which included people on the commission who were not part of the church or any church atheists.

So the way we manage it is by listening, thinking, going back to the basic principles of Hooker in the way. the 17th century, one of the great Anglican thinkers who said we work on scripture, tradition, and reason. And that's the Anglican pattern. Do you think by Christmas you might make your first intervention on the Labour government over winter fuel payments? I have already said I thought the two-child limit was a mistake and it should have been abolished. Okay, that didn't directly answer my question. I have we have the bishops have spoken out very clearly on a number of them on the winter field payment. Well thank you for your time. Thank you for yours. Thank you very much for happens. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, Alasso, what do you think? Well, I like Justin Robby.

I think those who say the worst archbishop ever are just sort of trolls. I think he's very interesting. I think he's thoughtful. How did you first come across him? I don't really remember. But I know him quite well and I've come here fairly often. But I think he's

I think he's I mean we didn't do this but sometimes I regularly do when I bump into him is I'll just say something like Psalm 48 what's it about? It is a bit. I know you think the Archbishop of Canterbury should know

the Bible inside out but he knows the Bible inside out. And I thought he was very reflective about his own, very open about his own life and childhood, very reflective about his own journey, and about his own doubts. I thought, I thought that was really interesting because for an older generation, I guess they would have been very wary about the Archbishop talking openly about his mother's alcoholism, her affairs, or his own mental health. And I can imagine a sort of older British generation now in their 90s who'd sort of slightly wince and say, well...

Interestingly, though, when I did interview him for GQ back in 2016, eight years ago, he didn't really want to talk that much about the mental health side of things. He said he had moments when he felt very low. But they're just sort of saying, I take the pills, you have to get help, you have to talk to people. I think that's great that he does that. And it's astonishing is that when he's sort of got there, how confidently and gracefully he does it and how straightforwardly. Yeah. And when you see someone doing it, you're like, oh, of course. I mean, it's not a problem at all. And it's actually very, very powerful. I think often those things go wrong, don't they? Because one sounds awkward and doesn't know how to get that. But I'd imagine even any critic listening to that would be like, oh, actually, that's pretty good. That's pretty. straightforward and helpful.

And what do you think about his political stuff? I think it's so difficult, isn't it? So, so difficult. And as he says, I mean, the whole, we didn't get into what's happening with this great Russian patriarch who's basically completely endorsed Putin's regime in the invasion of Ukraine. He reminded us of the church backing and profiting from slavery. And so it's really, really tough for them. And who knows? I mean, you can imagine also how angry the conservative government must have been about the criticism about Rwanda.

They will have felt, you know, this is typical. In fact, the conservatives often get very angry. There's a lovely, one of my favorite moments is Willie Whitelaw, who was my predecessor in Penrith on the border. It's lovely moment where Robert Runcsey was criticizing Mrs. Thatcher. And he was put on television when he was deputy prime minister, you know, what do you think about the archbishop criticizing the prime minister? and he said, well, I served with him the Scots Guards. And I think you need to understand about him is he's a very, very religious man. Yeah, it must be hard, though, to work, because he could. He could be out talking about politics all the time,

because he clearly thinks about it a lot, reads about it a lot, cares about it a lot. But when I was just looking through some of the more recent stuff, you know, he's been maybe half a dozen times when he's really spoken out on the last But he's got some of the same problems, I imagine the Queen had and the King has, which is that they will have very, very strong views on things. And most of the time they can't express them. You know, they, you know, I'm sure, you know, everybody has very strong views on Remain, on Brexit, Scottish independence, on Russia, Ukraine, on Israel, Palestine,

and how they navigate their way through that stuff. It's hard. I thought the stuff about the things that might be able to. have gone wrong, but these two mistakes, as he called them, at the coronation. I mean, that's a great vision, the crown, the wrong way around. That would have been quite a thing with four billion people watching. Can you imagine if it had not gone on the right way? Yeah.

I didn't. Did you notice him fiddling around and rolling his eyes? No, no, you were there in your, in your buttons outfit, right? My button's outfit, yeah, yeah. Button's outfit, yeah. I never quite got to the bottom of his mother, because she was the most charming, outgoing. bubbly, kind, sort of grandmotherly figure,

but maybe since being a little unkind to him, but I maybe detected that maybe she was a more tricky mother to have. Must have been. And maybe one of those people who, someone not in the family meets them, and it's just like, this is the most saintly wonderful person, but maybe... I wonder if you, I mean, look, I don't know,

but, I mean, if she was an alcoholic whilst in number 10, she said it was a drunken encounter with this guy Montague, Brown. I also wonder whether, I mean, I think I'd be really, I think I would feel my life really turned upside down if I discovered that my dad wasn't as to my dad. Yeah. I think I'd find, and I think my kids would feel the same if they suddenly discovered I wasn't their dad. Yeah. Wouldn't you feel that was a bit? Yeah. Yeah. He seemed to, I think once he said before about when he heard, when he's, his upbringing father, as he called him, when he died, he felt there was a lot of relief amid the grief.

That story's a bit strange, isn't it? Charles Moore, who's this kind of old fuddy-duddy, sort of Christian, traditionalist young Foggi, turns out to be the person who's about sex affairs in 1950s and is sort of getting in touch like some sort of classic sun journalist of doorstepping the Archbishop

to be like, well, I heard it. I don't think he was doorstep. I think he, I think he, I think he was reporting back the gossip and then persuading him to get this test done. But tell me about that. I mean, you've been a journalist. I mean, in the end, I guess it's just,

as a journalist, Charles Moore just had to follow up with that story, did he? I guess so, yeah, and then thought about it. He actually said, didn't he? You know, the gentleman got very nice about it, they waited a couple of weeks. But I guess Charles Moore would have, as a newspaper man, would have detected this was one of the biggest stories that he never stumbled across.

I think if you discover that the Archbishop of Canterbury is born out of this rather strange non-marital relationship with somebody who worked for Winston Churchill. I think you're struggling to say that you're just going to ignore that one, Rory. Yeah, yeah. So you can't be too harsh on Charles on that front. The other thing that I really admire about him, and I think people would have got a glimpse of, I mean, there are many, many things I admire about him, but one of them is he didn't talk that much about the work that he's done in Sudan, the work he's done in Nigeria, just how much

he knows about those places, how much he cares about those places, how kind of tough-minded and realistic he is about warlords and men of violence, because it's usually men, and the horror that they create there. But I'm also very, very proud, really proud to have him as an archbishop. I'm really proud. I mean, I also really, really admire Rowan Williams' predecessor, but I think they're both really good examples of modern Britain. I once said to him, I thought it was really unfair that every time the, Rowan is always called Rowan, or is just intends to be called Welby in the headlines. But no, well, I think we're agreed. He's a very good man doing very good work on behalf of his maker, in whom you and he believe profoundly.

And just to finish for international this is also on behalf of the country. I mean, what's so unusual about his position is that he is. the head of this established church which is completely tied into our constitution, which the king is the head of, which because of the history of the British Empire, stretches all the way around the world and brings me, you know, these conflicts he's talking about with archbishops and people protesting, brings me into contact with a lot of the developing world. I mean, it's, it's, he is much more than you would have thought part of the state, part of the constitution. Yeah, and when he travels and when he's dealing with these issues in different, of the world within the church he has to be a diplomat as well as a church leader well alice i'm really pleased we did that and uh don't know whether we're going to tempt you to do many

more people who do god oh i like god i like doing god good good good all right it's just you don't do god when you're doing god in politics but you're happy to do that anyway thank you i thought it's very interesting and i also think it brings out a very interesting side of you yeah well you didn't did you really have to go down the route of your out war already did you have to do that yeah you have to There are so many things going on with him which reveal Alistair. I thought that was very, thank you. Thank you.