Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
The Archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England, who rose from a working-class East End background without formal education.
Eight records
The keepsakes
The book
T.S. Eliot
I'm very fond of the writings and poetry of TS Eliot, and I would love to take the complete works away with me, and go back again and again to that wonderful poem East Coca, because East Coker was in my diocese of Bath and Wells.
The luxury
a computer and an empty bottle
I would like to type up a book because I love writing and the book will be How to Cope with Loneliness.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How surprised were you when the call came?
I was very surprised to when the invitation came. As you said a moment ago, I've never run away from any challenge, and this was certainly a challenge.
Presenter asks
Does that mean that in a sense war was quite fun for you? Because for a boy of that age and onwards, there were sort of fine times to be had.
Yes, I have to say there were aspects to it that were very exciting indeed, you know, looking out at night and seeing the searchlights scan the sky and the noise and so on, and the call to get down into the shelter and down in the shelter you went and you peered outside. But as well as that, of course, there was the sadness that went with it, going to school, perhaps the following morning to find your friend was not there, or someone had been killed in the bombing before.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
Presenter
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My castaway this week is a man of the Church. His path to the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy has been unusual, but no one could accuse him of not understanding the lives of those more disadvantaged than his own.
Presenter
He's the son of a hospital porter from the East end of London. He left school at fifteen with no qualifications and worked in an electricity showroom and as a wireless operator in the RAF before entering the church.
Presenter
Today he wrestles with the issues of female ordination, homosexuality, and religious apathy, reflecting that while he didn't choose his job, he's never run away from any challenge in his life.
Presenter
He is the primate of all England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend doctor George Carey.
Presenter
Not only did you not choose your job, Archbishop, you were in fact the twenty five to one outsider, I think, in early ninety one. How surprised were you when the call came?
Dr George Carey
Yes, I was aware that I was very much an outsider, and I was very surprised to when the invitation came. As you said a moment ago, I've never run away from any challenge, and this was certainly a challenge.
Presenter
But was it one you wanted? It certainly wasn't one you expected.
Dr George Carey
I was very happy.
Dr George Carey
Being a diocesan bishop of Bath and Wells, a very happy diocese. So, no, I wasn't looking for a new challenge, particularly at that particular time. I was enjoying it.
Presenter
So was there any part of you that thought, yes, this is a wonderful opportunity and I am deeply flattered to have this invitation, but actually there's part of me that wishes it hadn't come?
Dr George Carey
As I saw the opportunities for leadership in the Church of England, and especially in the 90s when the entire Anglican communion were focussing on the decade of evangelism, I saw this as some contribution I could make, because that is very much at the heart of my mission, to make the Church more outward-looking, more vibrant, more confident itself. And so, if you like, I saw that as a deep attraction.
Presenter
But that's that sounds like a totally a sense of duty.
Dr George Carey
Well, duty is very much part of the Christian calling, and um not to be despised. But at the time, while I had that sense of duty about it, there was a sense of this is an unexpected opportunity, and of course um I'll take the offer up.
Presenter
I only press you on that, because you've always said that that you enjoy people, that you've enjoyed your job in the Church, because it's brought you in direct contact with people, which is, of course, what you would get very little of, presumably, as Archbishop.
Dr George Carey
Well, you may think so, Sue, but in fact actually I make it my effort to get to know people around the world and in this country. In my diocese I do what I call teaching missions. I go into the parishes and the deaneries. I try to mix with ordinary people. And my family make sure I'm very much down to earth.
Presenter
Right, let's turn to music now. Um tell me about the first record you've chosen.
Dr George Carey
Well, I grew up in the war years. I was ten when war ended. It was a very traumatic time for any Londoner. And one of the great memories I have, not only of the great warmth of community in London, but also the music at the time. And I've chosen Joe Loss and his orchestra. A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.
Presenter
That sudden night, the night we met, There was magic abroad in the air.
Presenter
There were angels dining at the rips, and a nightingale sang in barkly.
Presenter
A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square, with Joe Loss in his orchestra and Paula Greene singing there. Um so uh you would have been Archbishop Four when war broke out.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Does that mean that in a sense war was quite fun for you? Because for a boy of that age and onwards, so you know there were sort of fine times to be had.
Dr George Carey
Yes, I have to say there were aspects to it that uh were very exciting indeed, you know, uh looking out at night and seeing the searchlights scan the sky and the noise and so on, and the call to get down into the shelter and down in the shelter you went and you peered outside. But as well as as well as that, of course, there was the sadness that that went with it, going to school, perhaps the following morning to find a
Dr George Carey
Your friend was not there, or someone had been killed in the bombing before. So.
Presenter
Good.
Dr George Carey
That went along with it, and then the evacuations that happened as well.
Presenter
But you weren't evacuated.
Dr George Carey
I was evacuated a few times to Warminster and Bradford on Avon, and well remember that wasn't always exciting then, change of schools that was traumatic.
Presenter
And leaving your parents behind.
Dr George Carey
Well, only on one occasion, actually, on the second and third occasion, my mother um came with us. My father was working for Ford's Motor Company, and so he had to get on with his job.
Presenter
What about your brothers and sisters?'Cause there were a lot of you, weren't there?
Dr George Carey
Uh
Dr George Carey
Yes, I'm the oldest of five, um, so I bossed them around and but uh yes, it was hard on my mother.
Presenter
But what sort of uh young boy were you? Were you one of the lads, or would you have stood a break?
Dr George Carey
Oh yes, very much indeed. Oh yes, there's nothing different about me. And um played football in the street and the banjo around where we lived and and and so on, yes.
Presenter
And and the family, I mean s strong sense of family, East End, knees ups.
Dr George Carey
There was a tremendous sense of community and a very happy family life for me, my mother and father. Had very little to do with the with organized Christianity, but in their own way, as I look back now, very devout people, believers in God, believing in prayer. But in a way, the church was quite a distant thing from them. Although I have to say,
Dr George Carey
that when we went to Bradford on Avon, it was the local church community there that befriended my mother.
Dr George Carey
and all of us. And I think if there was a start to my Christian pilgrimage, it began with that church school in Bradford-on-Avon.
Presenter
Perhaps we're not
Presenter
Your father apparently wrote pop lyrics, didn't he?
Dr George Carey
Yes, he did. How did you know that? Yes, he certainly did. And there was one occasion when we had a song published, and he was so proud of it. And he had a lovely singing voice, as my mother did.
Presenter
But um in terms of education, things were a bit rocky for you.
Dr George Carey
When I c returned after the war at the age of ten, my education, formal education, was somewhat in tatters, and um that was sad, but on the other hand, one I'd never live with regret. It was an experience that I treasure very much, the depth of community, the sense of excitement, at the same time the the great joy as war ended.
Presenter
But it meant that you failed your eleven plus.
Dr George Carey
Yes, it did, yes it did, and uh although I passed the thirteen plus as a late developer. But what I didn't realise is that my dear mother and father had already decided, as I was so happy in my school, that they didn't want to disturb me. So, in fact, actually they put it to me, wouldn't it be in your best interest to stay at the secondary modern school? Of course, I didn't know the real ins and outs of the implications of that, so I said, Yes, why not? But it did mean that I left school without any formal qualification.
Presenter
So do you think that that lack of academic background has has fostered this determination that you obviously have to succeed, a kind of I'll show'em kind of approach?
Dr George Carey
I have no doubt about that, actually. Um there's a sense in which those early war years I think I grew up in a a community which had a strong sense of class distinction.
Dr George Carey
And I was aware, as I grew into my teens and later, that I if I was going to get anywhere, then of course I had to fight for it.
Presenter
Tell me about record number two.
Dr George Carey
Well
Dr George Carey
I met up with two young men, and perhaps I might be able to tell you about it in a moment, but I have chosen a wonderful piece of music which I discovered in my late teens, and this is Jupiter from the Planet Suite, and it brings back very important and wonderful memories of that particular period of my life.
Presenter
Part of Jupiter from Holst's Planet Suite, played by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian. Now, how did that become part of your life in your teens, Doctor Kerry?
Dr George Carey
Well, the war left me with lots of questions, and the questions were fairly philosophical in origin.
Dr George Carey
What is this all about? Is there a God who cares? What kind of world is it? How do you make sense of the universe? And even though I was a teenager, you could still wrestle with these questions. And when I was about sixteen, sixteen and a half, my brother, Bob, said to me one day, Why don't you come along to the local church? There's a very good youth club along over there. So I went along with him.
Dr George Carey
I met up with two young men, just slightly older than myself, David and John Harris, and they invited me around to their house, and they loved music, and they had a real record player, which I didn't have. And so every Saturday afternoon perhaps not every Saturday afternoon, because I was quite keen on football, I went around to their house, and we often listened to records for three, four hours. The darkness would fall, and we'd still be there listening to the dream of Durontius and other things. They enlarged my musical horizons. And in a sense, art, music, and Christianity overlapped in a most mysterious way.
Presenter
Do you stay in contact with them? Do you still live?
Dr George Carey
Yes, I do. Yes, yes. I still hear from them from time to time, and of course they are thrilled with the story of my development, because they see very much they had a ministry to me at that particular period, although perhaps they would never put it in quite that way.
Presenter
But was there a moment when you consciously became a Christian? Can you can you date the time and the place?
Dr George Carey
Yes, I can. I can date it to may, nineteen fifty three, just before I was called up to do my national service.
Presenter
What happened? Can you describe it?
Dr George Carey
No, I can't really tell you that, Sue. It's just a a strong, overwhelming feeling that I had found something deeply important.
Dr George Carey
It was intellectual, it was a discovery, it was also very mystical and spiritual at the same time. It doesn't really matter so much about how it happened, the very fact it did happen.
Presenter
But if anybody had told you or or the Harris brothers or your family then that one day you'd become Archbishop of Canterbury, I wonder what your reaction would have been.
Dr George Carey
Well, my reaction would go, pull the other one, it's got bells on it, but no. At that particular stage I didn't have any idea how my life was going to pan out at all.
Presenter
Record number three.
Dr George Carey
Well
Dr George Carey
One I've chosen now is Mozart, because that was a discovery too when I was a young person to find how wonderful Mozart's music is. I don't even know the lovely story that Karl Bach once said, he's the theologian, he once said something like this, that when the angels are going about their business, they listen to Bach. But when they're relaxing in the evening, they listen to Mozart, and the good God listens with the greatest of pleasure.
Presenter
That was part of the third movement of Mozart's Symphony No. forty, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. And that, if I understand it correctly, became important to you during your national service in the mid fifties. Now how, why, where, when?
Dr George Carey
Well, about nine months after I made that decision and then started to embrace formal Christianity, I was called up to do my national service in the Royal Air Force as a wireless operator. So a year later I found myself in Egypt
Dr George Carey
and in Shaiba, which is what was then a small Air Force base near Basra.
Dr George Carey
So what I found there was that I was one of one hundred and twenty young men. There was no chaplain. One day I discovered a hut locked and inside there was a piano and it was obviously a chapel. About every two months a chaplain would come down from Habania to take a communion service. So I asked the CO if I could open it one day to start a little service and a lad of my own age, slightly older, I think he was in the education department, joined me. He was a marvellous pianist. And so after the service, the occasional service that we had, out would come some wonderful Mozart. So I fell in love with that piece then.
Presenter
When did you begin warming to the idea of ordination?
Dr George Carey
During that period in Scheiber, I remember one evening under the s this sky filled with stars, I started to think about what am I going to do in a year's time when I'm demobbed. I thought of education. Suddenly the thought came to me, why not study for the ordained ministry? And then the
Dr George Carey
sickening feeling i in one's uh stomach, but I haven't got the qualifications, and I would have to go to university and and all that, and that troubled me. But well, having set my put my hand to the plough, I I decided that it was quite right to explore that when I returned home.
Presenter
And so you did. And you got, if if I've got the story right, you got three A levels and six O's in just over a year.
Dr George Carey
And you got
Dr George Carey
Yes, it was something like that.
Presenter
That's called determination, isn't it? That that's called fairly single-minded ambition.
Dr George Carey
It's called
Dr George Carey
I was highly motivated and obviously there was some ability there as well and but I just love the study. I'm still a student and I still enjoy reading books and widening my knowledge.
Presenter
Record number four.
Dr George Carey
Well, I've chosen um a fairly modern pop singer called Van Morrison, an Irishman.
Dr George Carey
And he's got that a wonderful ability to bring together the modern style with something which is deeply mystical and spiritual. And I've chosen um a song called Be Thou My Vision.
Speaker 1
Be thou my salvation, O Lord of my heart.
Speaker 1
Nought be all else to me save that thy art.
Speaker 1
They're my best thought in the day and the night.
Speaker 1
Waking or sleeping, the present smiled.
Presenter
Van Morrison, and be thou my vision.
Presenter
You graduated in Divinity, Archbishop, in the early sixties, and you were ordained, and you became a curate in Islington, and then a lecturer at various theological institutions, and then you became a vicar in Durham, which is where you developed your your evangelical approach, isn't it? Now wh where did that come from?
Dr George Carey
Well, I took over a city centre church.
Dr George Carey
And when I took it over that particular point, the church was closed six days a week, open on a Sunday when no one was around. And it was a Durham is a very busy place. It was a Victorian building, a lot wrong with the building, and yet there was a faithful nucleus of people there.
Dr George Carey
And it gave me a wonderful opportunity, and I want to say together with the congregation, to do something quite new and quite exciting, and that was to develop a seven day a week week approach to the Christian faith and serving the wider community. And the lay people were very significant to the story, their vision, their energy, and so on. But it was simply flinging wide open the doors of the church, allowing fresh air to blow into it.
Presenter
And you had an organization called Agnostics Anonymous, didn't you?
Dr George Carey
Yes, I wanted to create an opportunity for people who uh were declared unbelievers or people who are searching for faith to come along to the vicarage, talk to me frankly, so we can actually have an intellectual discussion exploring knowledge, faith, understanding.
Presenter
With the guarantee that there will be no prayers, no hymns, no preaching.
Dr George Carey
There's no
Dr George Carey
Nothing like that. No pressure whatsoever. Just listening. All that I said I can guarantee is that my wife would make a very good cup of tea. You didn't offer coffee in Durham.
Presenter
But somebody once said, didn't they, that the Church is the only club that exists for its non members. At some point, presumably, you have to introduce the subject of God.
Dr George Carey
Yes.
Dr George Carey
I think it was William Temple, the great William Temple, who said that long ago, and he for me is a great model of what an archbishop ought to be like some one rooted in society, some one is open to new ideas, and yet unashamedly committed to the Christian faith in all its verity.
Presenter
So what are you saying? Are you saying if you open your doors, as you say, and let the fresh air come in, and if you have modern music and dancing and activities and non-religious things, that at some point so many people will have come in that you can then bring God into play, religion into play?
Dr George Carey
All that, all that, but at the same time not ditching and jettising the good things, the old things, the traditional things. We still have the Book of Common Prayer as a regular feature of our life, but we were trying to relate the Christian faith to all sorts and conditions of people.
Presenter
But if the recipe f uh is as simple as that for selling the church, then why isn't it happening across the land? I mean, I understand the figures now are that ninety five percent of people do not go to church.
Dr George Carey
And do people do not go to church? I can tell you, see, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all. But we did see people coming in great numbers, and that church is still very lively indeed. But it is happening. It is happening in many, many parts of the world, and not least in our own country. We often hear that the church is in decline. Well, statistics show that the church is bouncing back. The church is growing, that good things are happening. And we don't have to go for gimmicks. I mean, this is the thing I want to underline. It is a matter of actually sane, intelligent Christianity, which is looking into the world and trying to apply what we believe to be the truth to the situation we find ourselves in.
Presenter
That's what the traditionalists worried about when you were made Archbishop, wasn't it, that you were going to institute g guitar playing in Lambeth Palace.
Dr George Carey
Yes, I hope I've reassured them that I have no wish to ditch anything that is important. And for me, the prayer book is a wonderful tool of worship in Lambeth Palace Chapel. We use the prayer book more than any other form of liturgy. But we have to face the fact that the majority of young people now growing up are growing up without any knowledge of liturgy whatsoever. So we may bemoan the fact that the people do not understand the prayer book anymore, but somehow we've got to give.
Dr George Carey
a faith to them, and I'm quite unrepentant in saying that it really doesn't matter what form of liturgy we offer, as long as one that is relevant to their needs and their aspirations.
Presenter
Tell me about your next record.
Dr George Carey
One of my favourite artists is Bob Newhart. And humour is deeply important to me, Sue. I often use stories and jokes in sermons and addresses, because I think that's one way in which you connect with people, in one way in which you help them to relax. And this, of course, is famous description of the driving instructor and all that happens.
Speaker 3
Alright, let's pull into the alley up there and practice a little alley driving. This is.
Speaker 3
This is something a lot of the schools leave out that we think is pretty you're going too fast, Mrs. Webb.
Speaker 3
You're you're up around sixty and it's kind of a sharp turn there.
Speaker 3
Alright, let's just drive down the alley. That's the way. Uh, Mrs. Webb, I maybe we better stop here.
Speaker 3
Well, I don't think you're gonna make it between the the the truck and the building.
Presenter
Bob Newhart and the driving instructor. It's very good.
Speaker 3
Uh Driving instructors.
Presenter
I can't imagine you delivering that in a sermon or anything like it. Are you really?
Dr George Carey
No, I've often wanted to use it, but I it's never been able to fit in any any of my sermons yet.
Presenter
It's no
Presenter
Now, you're not a fence-sitter, as you said. You lead from the front, you've made that plain all along, and you certainly did that over the ordination of women, didn't you?
Dr George Carey
Come now
Dr George Carey
Women
Presenter
Against advice, because people there were people who were saying to you, sit back and see what happens, but you decided you were going to lead from the front.
Dr George Carey
Yes, there was certainly advice being given to me at the time that it might be better to sit on the fence and wait and see what Synod decides but it seemed to me that this was it was right, as Archbishop of Canterbury I should take a lead. I didn't want the rest of the nineties to be taken up
Dr George Carey
going through further discussion when it seemed to me that we were ready as a church to do it so.
Presenter
But you were, in a sense, effectively laying your job on the line, in in leading from the front, as we've said.
Presenter
What are you going to do?
Presenter
On an issue that now faces you, perhaps an even more controversial issue, that of the church and homosexuality.
Dr George Carey
I think we've really got to put this in perspective. What comes first, which is much more important than the ordination of women, hose homosexuality or any single issue like that, is the mission of the Church and the future of the Church in our land.
Presenter
But what about the issue of homosexuality? Because earlier this year the Anglican Communion certainly signalled that it was prepared to initiate a process which will eventually could eventually lead to the recognition of gay relationships. Now, are you leading from the front on this one?
Dr George Carey
Well, I am, and indeed want to say on that issue, it's not it wasn't actually as clear as that, uh the way you put it. But what we're talking about is that we have to engage with the questions that people are f f focusing on these days, but we do so in the light of Scripture and the Christian tradition. That comes first and foremost to me, and for most of the primates as well.
Presenter
But the traditionalists would say that as far as the Bible is concerned, homosexuality is an abomination.
Dr George Carey
I share with them their commitment to the Bible, and certainly would want to assure them that in no way am I wanting to ditch that or to turn over the clear teaching of Scripture but with that must go to the listening to the experience of men and women to day whose experience may be different from ours.
Presenter
But do you foresee a time um and maybe it's a decade away, who knows, do you foresee a time when the Church will recognise gay relationships?
Dr George Carey
I don't think that's a question I want to answer to this particular point in in and in quite that way. I don't see that as a reality facing the Church at this present time.
Presenter
But you'll go on debating and you'll go on talking about it. You'll go on listening to both sides of the aisle.
Dr George Carey
Go on, listen.
Dr George Carey
The Anglican Church is the the kind of church which is not auth authoritarian. We do listen seriously to questions, and that is my commitment to.
Presenter
But are you sitting more on the fence in this one than you were over women's ordination?
Dr George Carey
I think you'll have to wait and see, but I don't think I've I've done so so far.
Presenter
Record number six.
Dr George Carey
Record number six is a hymn that means so much to my wife Eileen and myself. We had it on our wedding day. It's followed us through our life, at every big moment of our life, our baptism of our children, even the enthronement as Archbishop of Canterbury. Oh, praise ye the Lord
Speaker 1
Come on, rejoice in it.
Presenter
Choice in his life.
Speaker 1
Have the angels on lights.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 1
And I tell you my only love.
Presenter
Happy morning.
Presenter
In Christmas I
Presenter
O praise ye the Lord, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge. What effect has being Archbishop of Canterbury had on your family life? It it must have put it under enormous pressure at times.
Dr George Carey
Yes, it has indeed. Um luckily my family were all grown up when I received the invitation to become Archbishop of Canterbury.
Dr George Carey
It has been quite a challenge to both of us, to Eileen and myself, but she has been so supportive, and she's a most remarkable person in her own right, deeply intelligent, completely loyal and fearless. With her own gifts, she was trained as a nurse in London, and wherever we go on our travels she takes a particular interest in medical matters. But yes, it has been quite an effect on our children as well, although from a distance. But they've been tremendously supportive, and it's been fun to have them around, supporting me when the times have been hard.
Presenter
Because they have been hard. The press has not given you an easy time, has it?
Dr George Carey
I don't think they give a he easy time to any public figure, but I don't complain about that. One of the great joys about our society is that we delight in a free press, and journalists have to do their jobs and if I can learn from their criticism, all well and good.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
This is a very Christian attitude, if I may say. There have been times when they've seemed to be gunning for you, or accusing you of making yet another gaff. There must be times when you thought, oh
Presenter
Below them.
Dr George Carey
What I hope sometime they will start to do is that if they tot up the gaffes as against the things that I've said that have been prophetically right and positive and courageous, they may well find that the goals outnumber the failures or mishits.
Presenter
Number seven.
Dr George Carey
Yes, well this record, Chopin's Etude, number three in E major, opus, number ten, I heard um years and years ago. For me it's one of the most beautiful pieces of piano music ever. It's so wistful, sad, and yet at the same time irradiates hope and joy.
Presenter
Part of Chopin's Etude No. three in E Major, Opus ten, played by Vladimir Ashkenazi You've often been compared in the press, Archbishop, to John Major. You're both men of humble origins, self taught in many respects, both like a game of football, or watching it at least. Do you get on?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Dr George Carey
Self-defense.
Presenter
with each other.
Dr George Carey
Oh, yes, we get on very well indeed. Um I think he's a splendid person.
Dr George Carey
He's a man of great integrity and he's
Dr George Carey
His contributions, especially in Northern Ireland, is very impressive indeed.
Presenter
But would you often pick up the phone in Lambeth Palace and speak to it at
Presenter
Didn't happen a lot between misses Thatcher and your predecessor, though, did it?
Dr George Carey
I think the same relationship was there, deep loyalty, but my predecessor coined the phrase a critical creative relationship. In other words, that it is important for the Church to be detached from issues of Government policy, but be able to make its own viewpoint, as I do, as you know, from time to time on prison work or whatever it is. You know, you want to give a distinctive Church slant on a particularly important issue.
Presenter
Politicians don't always like it, though, do they?
Dr George Carey
No, um that's very much up to them to take it or leave it as they choose, but on the whole most of them appreciate it.
Presenter
Now, if you could leave all that behind you, which is what we offer here, and set sail for this desert island, and shed the onus of high office, would you welcome that?
Dr George Carey
Ha ha ha.
Dr George Carey
Then
Dr George Carey
But you
Dr George Carey
Do you know, I think I could find it quite difficult. On the one hand, maybe the the spiritual truths that I value that's very much at the heart of my life would give me the resources to cope, I'm sure it would. But at the same time, I'm a very gregarious person. I love having family and people around me. So um perhaps I could put up with it, Sue, for a week or two. After that it could get very stressful indeed.
Presenter
But you'd survive, no doubt.
Dr George Carey
I'm pretty sure I would survive, because I my faith is deep rooted, and um I'm a man of hope as well.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
You're an optimist. Not just a man who meets a challenge head on, but somebody who is essentially and deep down optimistic, yes?
Dr George Carey
Yes, I am basically optimistic. Um although my wife will at times say to me when we go on holiday that I will always say we will never get everything in that case and she is usually proved right. But basically I'm optimistic about human nature. I'm optimistic about the universe because it's God's universe and he will have the last word.
Presenter
We'll have your last record.
Dr George Carey
My last record is Tchaikovska's 1812 Overture. It reminds me once again of the war years. I can remember the celebrations in 1945, and I think I discovered this music for the first time around that particular time, as we celebrated together, as we had the street parties, as we celebrated a wonderful victory, and at the same time remembered all those who had fallen. Over fifty million people died in the last war. And so that victory was tinged with deep regret and deep sorrow as well.
Presenter
The end of Tchaikovsky's eighteen twelve overture, played by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Archbishop.
Dr George Carey
It will have to be, oh, praise ye the Lord, to remind me of the great pleasure of having a wonderful, supportive family around me all my life.
Presenter
And what about your book? You've got the Bible waiting for you, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare.
Dr George Carey
The complete
Dr George Carey
Well, I would enjoy reading both of those from cover to cover again and again. I'm very fond of the writings and poetry of TS Eliot, and I would love to take the complete works away with me, and go back again and again to that wonderful poem East Coca, because East Coker was in my diocese of Bath and Wells. I often went there, and that is where his ashes now reside.
Presenter
So we'll allow you the four quartets, but not the complete works.
Dr George Carey
Definitely. Well, I'll settle for that. Thank you, Sue, very much indeed.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
Thank you so very much indeed. What about your luxury?
Dr George Carey
Well my luxury, how difficult this is. I have decided what I would do is ask for two things. First of all, if you will allow me to take a computer with me and an empty bottle. Now with the computer I would like to type up a book because I love writing and the book will be How to Cope with Loneliness. Write as a spiritual leader. Then I having completed that I would pop it in the empty bottle and send it off to my literary agent.
Presenter
Doctor George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Dr George Carey
Thank you so very much indeed.
Presenter
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter asks
So do you think that that lack of academic background has fostered this determination that you obviously have to succeed, a kind of 'I'll show 'em' kind of approach?
I have no doubt about that, actually. There's a sense in which those early war years I think I grew up in a community which had a strong sense of class distinction. And I was aware, as I grew into my teens and later, that if I was going to get anywhere, then of course I had to fight for it.
Presenter asks
What happened? Can you describe it?
No, I can't really tell you that, Sue. It's just a strong, overwhelming feeling that I had found something deeply important. It was intellectual, it was a discovery, it was also very mystical and spiritual at the same time. It doesn't really matter so much about how it happened, the very fact it did happen.
Presenter asks
So what are you saying? Are you saying if you open your doors and let the fresh air come in, and if you have modern music and dancing and activities and non-religious things, that at some point so many people will have come in that you can then bring God into play, religion into play?
All that, but at the same time not ditching and jettisoning the good things, the old things, the traditional things. We still have the Book of Common Prayer as a regular feature of our life, but we were trying to relate the Christian faith to all sorts and conditions of people.
Presenter asks
You're an optimist. Not just a man who meets a challenge head on, but somebody who is essentially and deep down optimistic, yes?
Yes, I am basically optimistic. Although my wife will at times say to me when we go on holiday that I will always say we will never get everything in that case and she is usually proved right. But basically I'm optimistic about human nature. I'm optimistic about the universe because it's God's universe and he will have the last word.
“I was very surprised to when the invitation came. As you said a moment ago, I've never run away from any challenge, and this was certainly a challenge.”
“There's a sense in which those early war years I think I grew up in a community which had a strong sense of class distinction. And I was aware, as I grew into my teens and later, that I if I was going to get anywhere, then of course I had to fight for it.”
“No, I can't really tell you that, Sue. It's just a strong, overwhelming feeling that I had found something deeply important. It was intellectual, it was a discovery, it was also very mystical and spiritual at the same time.”
“It gave me a wonderful opportunity, and I want to say together with the congregation, to do something quite new and quite exciting, and that was to develop a seven day a week approach to the Christian faith and serving the wider community.”
“All that, but at the same time not ditching and jettisoning the good things, the old things, the traditional things. We still have the Book of Common Prayer as a regular feature of our life, but we were trying to relate the Christian faith to all sorts and conditions of people.”
“Do you know, I think I could find it quite difficult. On the one hand, maybe the spiritual truths that I value that's very much at the heart of my life would give me the resources to cope, I'm sure it would. But at the same time, I'm a very gregarious person. I love having family and people around me. So perhaps I could put up with it, Sue, for a week or two. After that it could get very stressful indeed.”