Hear Our Silence

I asked at our Archway Bookshop if they had a copy of Jeffrey Archer’s latest. After checking her screen, my young bookseller headed off confidently to the Religious shelves - or should I say shelf. And there it was, a single copy spine on, nestling like an autumn leaf. Pulling it from its pious place of concealment and reading the by-line ‘Benjamin Iscariot’, she exclaimed: ‘Oh, no, sorry, that’s the real one’!

Well, Jeffrey always has been a bit of a puzzle, and this book is a veritable psycho-maze. His choice of subject: the greatest cheat of all time - or was he, questions our storyteller. Did Jesus ‘do’ (as Blair would say) miracles: no, according to Jeffrey. Did he rise again, nope. Did Judas kill himself in despair. Not at all. His only despair was for the safety of Jesus whom he planned to smuggle from the impending death threats of his enemies. But it all went wrong. And after the events of Passover the disciples turned the torch of blame on Judas vilifying his memory in the Gospel accounts.

Macmillan production have gone along creatively with the storyteller’s conceit - that this is The Gospel of Judas (his own witness to Jesus’ sayings and deeds) written by his son Benjamin. So we read a book to all appearances exactly like a gospel text, complete with chapters and numbered verses and Gospel cross references in the margins (grace of Professor Francis J. Moloney of the Biblical Insitute, Rome). I’m sure it will do well, not least since it is bound to raise a few orthodox Christian hackles on the way.

Archer is a great storyteller and this chosen subject brings out the best in him. How the group will turn on the individual, ostracize him cruelly while projecting all their own failings on their victim. One senses a deep personal identification between Jeffrey and Judas, indeed it drives the storyline.

I first met Jeffrey Archer when he was up at Oxford, the all round athlete - double Blue, Gymnastics and Athletics - famous for his false starts. He came out to Heythrop, the Jesuit house of studies near Chipping Norton; a fellow Jesuit student at Campion Hall had invited him to tea at the golf hut. He must have been intrigued at the invitation to sup with Jesuits: perhaps some of our notorious Machiavellian guile rubbed off.

Enough: good luck with sales, Jeffrey. I’m sure you are on to yet another bestseller - 20 million was it, at the last count?

May be we can get you down to Axminster for a signing: that would set Cane against Abel.

A golden evening in Axminster last night: the young musicians from Wells Cathedral School gave their ‘Musicians’ Showcase’ in the Minster.

Their wonderfully varied programme was so much more than a mere showcase: it was a blinding beacon of excellence.

Wind, percussion, chamber choir and solo pianist: all performed with utmost skill. This musical offering would not have disgraced the Wigmore Hall. What struck me was the ease and grace of these young people as they enjoyed making music and sharing it with us. The youngest aged just thirteen was second French horn. When asked about the difficulty of her instrument, she replied cheerfully: ‘not really, I find it easy.’

There was joy too as the strings ended the evening with Dag Wiren’s Serenade for Strings. As they launched into the final movement (taken over long ago as the signature tune to Top of the Form) smiles were exchanged among the violins and cellos. But far from engaging in a musical ride, they held the underlying seriousness of the music which was written in 1937 under the shadow of the impending war.

I was bowled over by the intimate quality of the chamber choir - sixteen talented singers ‘invited’ to join by their distinguished Director, Nigel Perrin. They opened with John Taverner’s The Lamb, the evocative exposition of Blake’s Song of Innocence, ‘Little lamb who made thee.’ It was a breathtaking performance. But with their second piece, they moved to even greater heights. O Magnum mysterium is a short meditation dwelling on the amazing mystery that beasts in a stable were the first witnesses to the birth of a unique child before moving to marvel at the mother whose human womb bore him. The entire group so inhabited the music that they succeeded in a re-enactment of that distant moment. We were left in a profound silence at their close.

Former Kings Singer Nigel Perrin explained simply at the interval, ’yes, they enjoy singing that piece’.

Clearly Wells allow their students to breath and become themselves, as demonstrated by the boy aboard his double bass his blond locks shamelessly spiked. Then as we walked home, a platoon of hungry musicians ran past us on their way to explore the grosser offerings of the Indian take-away. Musicians for a time may seem to inhabit another world, but they are quickly back to earth and human once more.

I visited Exeter prison yesterday. A sobering view from the inside. People often dismiss the prison experience with such words as ‘oh, they get an easy time of it’. They should spend just an hour in Exeter’s Victorian establishment and witness the facts.

Two men to a cell measuring 12 feet by 10, bunk beds, a loo and handbasin. Little room for much else, a television if ‘privileges’ allow you. Food is served from small areas on each landing; then trays are taken back to cell. Both staff and inmates struggling to make sense of life, endure these difficult conditions day by day: shortage of money (the gym is unheated and the roof leaks), E wing was condemned 10 years ago but is still in use with slopping out still operating.

There is an enormous challenge, compounded by the complete mix of inmates - those on remand, young offenders, lifers, a sick wing and those hopefully awaiting transfer away from Exeter where they might more creatively serve their sentence with education and some vocational training available. Yet the constipated state of the entire prison system bears down ever harder. Movements are slowing up. Coping with the status quo becomes an increasing challenge.

A complex and neglected community of officers trying to do their job and inmates gritting their teeth and getting on with life from day to day. Would that the outside knew the inside story. For it is a story which belongs to us: a challenge to the society we have fashioned. A story that is unravelling our better aspirations.

Yesterday I was mailed by The Red House - ‘home of children’s books’. I think I made that up.

Yes We Did All That!!!

We once lived there: we made it come true. From our modest Red House bookshop in Thame High Street, where we lived over the shop, we grew the business to become the outright market leader.

And even though it has passed through many rapacious hands, I do believe it retains our original vision.

The belief that children - as emerging adults need stories. Not any old Walt Disney/McDonald pap, but the real stuff of words which connect and relate to their own excitement of finding themselves alive.

The audience of life are no fools. Children are best listeners, good at sniffing truth.

I hated today’s Guardian blip: ‘Kingsley Amis on Roald Dahl, right’

Dahl tells Amis of his latest advance: that’s where the market is…

‘I couldn’t do it…’ Says Amis . . . never liked kids books.

‘Never mind,’ declares the Maistro, ‘ the little bastards’d swallow it.’

Who is telling the truth . . . children or their favourite storyteller…

The doorbell rings and I find a man and woman on my doorstep. They are smiling enigmatically and at first I wonder what they want.

‘Do you think the world could be a better place?’, the lady inquires. My heart sinks: Jehovah Witnesses!

Why does doorstep Christianity make me draw back? I think it is the presumption that one can distill the essentials of belief in a casual conversation. Or perhaps I simply do not care for an evangelist turning up on my doorstep. 

‘Sorry, I don’t intend to talk about religion on my own doorstep,’ I replied, ’I am sure that you both have the love of Jesus filling your hearts. But I do it my own way.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you it was nice meeting you…’

Even as they retreat, I feel cross and flustered.

What would I have said to John the Baptist?