Serenhedd James

‘Sarah, by Divine Providence Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, Member of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, and Dean of His Majesty’s Chapels Royal.’ You might think with that kind of job title there would be someone, somewhere in the corridors of prelatical power, who might, like Sergeant Wilson to Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army, lean out from behind a tapestry occasionally and whisper: ‘do you think that’s wise, Your Grace?’ Given the sensitivities around the 9/11 anniversary perhaps someone at Lambeth Palace might have done a bit of due-diligence on the person whom the Archbishop was about to honour Lambeth Palace is home to serried ranks of professional advisors – not that you’d know it from their website.

When Margaret Thatcher died a joke did the rounds after her funeral that most of her cabinet, by then in their dotage, had turned up to St Paul’s Cathedral looking at last like their Spitting Image puppets. Roy Hattersley, who died on Saturday, aged far better. In later life the chubby-cheeked, clean-shaven splutterer took on something of a stylish, elderly bearded-hipster look as the Labour grandee embraced his calling as an author. He was fascinated by the motivations of the adherents of the theological system which his father had abandoned The combination of politics and writing is a well-trodden path, although not all who tread it find fame and fortune.