Archbishop in the making

Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG Rowan Williams: 'Haunted by Suicide' Today in The Times we carry a news story about and an extract from Rupert Shortt's new biography of the Archbishop, due to be published this week and already at number one in the Amazon religious best-seller list. I've written a review of the book to accompany Bess Twiston-Davies list of bestselling religious books, which is to become a regular feature of the online faith page. In the paper David Brown and I write: 'The suicide of a fellow student at Oxford 33 years ago has been revealed as one of the defining moments in the life of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. A new biography describes how Hilary Watson fell secretly in love with the charismatic and deeply spiritual 24-year-old doctoral student while he was counselling her in the 1970s. According to the book (serialised in times2 today), the young theologian was unaware of how his well-intentioned support had resulted in emotional turmoil for a woman four years his senior. He was the last person to see Miss Watson before she took an overdose of sleeping pills. She then called a mutual friend and asked her to “tell Rowan that it's not his fault”. At Miss Watson's inquest Dr Williams was exonerated of any responsibility but the coroner asked why he had set himself up as a source of “spiritual counsel” without formal training, the biography discloses.' There is also a chapter where Rupert reveals the Archbishop almost married  a Lutheran ordinand called Corinna. He apparently considered moving to Germany and becoming an Old Catholic: Rupert writes: 'Intellectual brilliance, spiritual maturity and an unusual mixture of wisdom and artlessness - these are among the main distinguishing features of Rowan's Westcott years, and part of the background to his relationship with Corinna, a Lutheran ordinand from Germany, who was spending a year at Westcott on an exchange programme and arrived at the college in Michaelmas term 1978. In early 1979 Rowan suddenly became engaged to her. 'As a child Corinna had been severely burnt in a fire. The accident left her partially disfigured, despite a series of skin grafts and other treatment. But neither her appearance nor her status as Westcott's only woman student seemed to affect her self-belief. Rowan's friends thought her confident, clever and intense. She was a regular visitor at his flat; the two were often observed in highbrow conversation. Many of Rowan's friends found the bride-to-be forceful, even overbearing. Sarah Coakley felt that the relationship didn't ring true - that the couple were play-acting, rather than genuinely in love. Other friends felt that Rowan was “unmarriageable” because he had always seemed so self-contained. But a wedding date was fixed for the late summer and a venue booked. 'The bride-to-be - nicknamed Brünnhilde by the nuns at Fairacres when Rowan showed her the convent during a visit to Oxford - insisted that she would be pursuing a career in her own church. Rowan therefore agreed to move to Germany and, given the thinness of the Anglican presence there, let it be known that he was thinking of joining the Old Catholics - the Church that broke with Rome after the First Vatican Council (1870-01) because it refused to accept papal infallibility.' The biography is fascinating, and reading that while also reading the Archbishop's book on Dostoevsky is a great aid to understanding. His time as Bishop of Monmouth seems to have been a bit problematic. I loved especially the stories of the Archbishop's childhood in Wales and his early academic life. The second half of the book was less enlightening for me, maybe because I've lived through so much of the Anglican Communion's difficulties through my own work on a daily basis. POSTED BY RUTH GLEDHILL ON NOVEMBER 10, 2008