David Hope

Speaker 20:00

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.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Costaway this week is a priest. Until very recently he was the second most important prelate in the Church of England, but he's thrown it all up to return to the life of a local vicar. A Yorkshireman, he rose rapidly through the ranks of the Church, where his talent for solving problems and soothing conflicts was much admired. An intellectual Conservative, he was personally opposed to the ordination of women and to Sunday trading.

Presenter0:53

As Bishop of London in the 90s, he was urged by a gay pressure group to out himself as gay. He responded by publishing the letter they'd sent him, calling a press conference and telling the world that he led a single celibate life. A few weeks later, he was promoted to Archbishop of York, the post he left behind earlier this year, tired of the politics and bureaucracy, to become once again a simple pastor among his flock. My focus, he explains, is much more on people than it is on paper. He is David Hope. So practically a year in, David, to St Margaret's, Ilkley. Is it living up to expectations? Are you feeling fulfilled by the move?

David Hope1:31

Oh, very much so. It's something I've always wanted to do ever and strangely ever since becoming bishop, because I've always felt that the the basic ministry of the priest among his people is is the fundamental uh ministry.

Presenter1:44

But look what you've given up. You've given up a mediaeval castle. I gather you've got a a a house on a council estate.

David Hope1:49

Well

David Hope1:52

No, it's rather more than that. It's it's quite a pleasant little lodge on the edge of Ilkley Moor, which I must say is very attractive indeed. Equally it has to be said, I enjoyed Bishopthorpe Palace, I mean, with its wonderful chapel, twelve forty one, built by Archbishop Walter de Grey.

Presenter2:07

And nine acres. What have you got now? A balcony and hanging baskets.

David Hope2:09

A balcony and hanging glasses.

David Hope2:13

But that's fine.

Presenter2:14

Allow you type your own sermons?

David Hope2:16

I do. I do everything. Somebody said to me the other day, Oh, well, uh, your office'll see to this, won't it? And I said, What do you mean my office? I'm my office now. So I'd do all my Yes, I do. And I'm very happy doing that. I quite enjoy it.

Presenter2:28

Or to drive you had a chauffeur, didn't you?

David Hope2:29

Well, I did, but I did a lot of driving myself. I do. And the chauffeur was a bit too slow for me.

Presenter2:32

And the sh

Presenter2:36

I want to talk about your car fanaticism later on. But I mean, you had, what, sixteen million people in your jurisdiction as well?

David Hope2:39

Yeah.

David Hope2:45

Yes, it was a very big responsibilities, Archbishop, there's no doubt about it. But uh now I have about four thousand. But in a way, much more you're much more intimately involved with people and their lives now.

Presenter2:56

But you've lost all manner of grand titles. You are, in fact, Lord Hope of the Thorns, aren't you? What are the Thor where are the Thorns?

David Hope3:00

But the thorns aren't.

David Hope3:03

Bothorns is Wakefield. It's the part of Wakefield where I was born and bred, as they say, and I, you know, got a very natural affinity to that part of the world, and I felt that to be a very appropriate title to take.

Presenter3:14

But for everyday purposes in Ilkley, you're David or Father David.

David Hope3:18

And Father David, yes.

Presenter3:20

Yes.

Presenter3:21

Tell me about your first record, Father David.

David Hope3:24

Well, um, I've chosen the opening of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony because that's, I suppose, the first bit of classical music I recollect from our home in Thorns Lane, one hundred and forty-one Thorns Lane, where we had one of those old wind-up gramophones, and my cousin Muriel had a record of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony. Uh I can still remember it. Uh, whenever the

David Hope3:46

The opening bar start up my mind goes immediately back to our front room in Thorns Lane.

Presenter4:39

The opening of Mozart's Fortieth Symphony, performed by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. Um let's go back then, David Hope, to one hundred and forty one, Thorns Lane, Wakefield. Um it wasn't a particularly religious family, yours, was it?

David Hope4:54

No, not at all. A fairly ordinary Thorns Lane family, really. My mother and father I mean, my mother and father went to church, as far as I can remember, occasionally, but not on a very regular basis. But it was my cousin Muriel who was the real formative influence in my life. Her parents she lived with you. Yes, she did, because her parents had died when she was very young and uh my father's mother took her in. So when my mother and father were married and went to live in the home and

Speaker 24:58

What does your mother do?

Presenter5:10

Didn't she know

David Hope5:20

She was already there, really, so she was like a big sister to us, myself, my twin sister.

Presenter5:25

How much older was she then?

David Hope5:26

About oh, fifteen years older.

Presenter5:29

So it's quite crowded, this house, by the way.

David Hope5:31

Yes, it was, and especially when we had to grow the grandmothers in at Christmas.

Presenter5:35

But Muriel said, Come along, you two. I'm going to take you to church.

David Hope5:38

Yes, and she took us to the cathedral at Wakefield, which was in the uh sort of Catholic tradition with lights and incense and music and so on, and I suppose that was the that was the beginning of it all, really. Little did she know.

Presenter5:51

That's what you fell for, was it? The ritual?

David Hope5:54

The smells in the bottom.

Presenter5:54

The smells and the bells.

David Hope5:56

Yeah, but uh not in any I mean, you were caught up in something which you couldn't quite explain. I mean I can still remember the beginning of Lent there, for example, when all of a sudden the the gold and the colour of the riridos was covered over in a very bare sackcloth. And of course as a school used to go down o on uh great feast days of the church as well. You're in the choir. I was in the choir, but the whole school, uh Wakefield Grammar School used to go down in those days on on those those occasions.

Presenter6:18

You're in the choir.

Speaker 26:18

But I was

David Hope6:26

So, yeah. But it was all part of life. You didn't think there was something extraordinary about it or special. It was a kind of.

David Hope6:33

Very sort of unselfconscious kind of thing, really.

Presenter6:36

Although it sounds as if it was extraordinary in in your family. I mean, I I gather you g uh g gave sermons in the assembly.

David Hope6:42

But

Presenter6:43

Your parents must have wondered what was going on.

David Hope6:45

What nerves was going on, yes.

Presenter6:46

Yeah.

David Hope6:47

and took collections.

Presenter6:48

Out.

David Hope6:48

Oh, did too.

Presenter6:49

Did you? From whom?

David Hope6:50

Well, from whoever was around, demanded money. And what did you do with the money?

Presenter6:54

And what did you do with the money?

David Hope6:55

Well, actually, I then sent it via murial to a church in London which had been bombed.

Presenter7:00

Oh really? So

David Hope7:01

Because she used to she was at London University at the time and she used to tell a stor I mean, one of the great things was excitements was going to Wexcote station to see her come back from London, seeing the train coming over the Ninety Nine Arches into Wakefield Westgate station.

Presenter7:16

And you can

David Hope7:17

And you can smell the steam and so on.

Presenter7:19

You're a real Yorkshire boy, aren't you?

David Hope7:21

Very much.

Presenter7:21

Very much.

Presenter7:23

Record number two.

David Hope7:24

Yes, well I think um

David Hope7:27

Yorkshire and uh brass bands have been part of the tradition, so I thought I'd uh select uh the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, one of the well known bands of Yorkshire, and the Floral Dance.

Presenter8:06

The Grimethorpe Colliery Band and the Floral Dance, what else? Um you've talked on many occasions, David Hope, about the thriftiness of those years when you were a child. We're not just talking about keeping bits of string in the drawer here, are we? We're talking about well, you've mentioned about people grafting together to make something. Look the culture of sacrifice.

David Hope8:23

Okay, look.

David Hope8:25

Yeah, so very much so. I mean, I think I'm very much aware, or became very much aware, of how much both my father and my mother, as it were, gave up for myself and my sister. And my father, I mean, I can remember my father sometimes saying to my mother when they went shopping, you know, and she was casting her eye over this and that, Do we really need it? You know, I can hear that. And also, my father drilling into myself and my sister, he said, If you want something, you're going to save for it. He didn't believe in all this, having all this stuff on tick and all the rest of it.

Speaker 38:45

Mm.

Speaker 38:51

Yeah.

Presenter8:51

Hmm.

Speaker 38:51

Uh

Presenter8:55

Which which now people do. I mean, is there an element of you that that disapproves or thinks that we're over indulgent?

David Hope8:57

Vernon

David Hope9:01

Well, I think there is an element of that, and I'm glad that I was brought up in the way that I was, because even now, I mean, I sometimes have to stop myself and hear my father saying, you know, Do you really need it? And on the whole I don't.

Speaker 39:12

Yeah.

Presenter9:12

Hmm.

David Hope9:13

Um

Presenter9:14

You never drew all of your salary, did you, as Archbishop?

David Hope9:16

No.

David Hope9:17

But I felt that that was um that the officer of priest, I believe, is a vocation, um and it I'm not in it for the money. As long as I had a roof over my head and enough to get by with, I mean, that was fair enough.

Presenter9:27

But is that also part of where your objection to Sunday trading comes from, that that somehow we're not willing to sacrifice the shopping opportunity, as it were?

David Hope9:36

Well, there is that element, but there's also the other element which I believe in order to be fully human, whether you believe in, you know, whatever faith tradition or none, I do believe that do we need times of rest, of recreation, of respite. And when I was working here, not very far from here in the west end of London on a Sunday, y you could almost feel the streets and the buildings breathing a sigh of relief that there when there's not all this noise and people tramping all over the place all the time.

Presenter10:05

We're never going to get it back now, though.

David Hope10:05

Yeah.

David Hope10:06

No, no, I'm afraid we're not.

Presenter10:07

Sunday is often busier than the rest of the day's work in terms of traffic and shopping.

David Hope10:09

Oh it is, I know. Oh, it's impossible. Impossible. And I th I I really do regret that very much, I think.

Presenter10:16

Tell me when you know you said that you were attracted in the first instance by the ritual, but when did you begin to absorb the theology? When did you realize that this was a vocation that you had?

David Hope10:26

I I think there was never any moment when I had a kind of Damascus Road experience. I think it was something which was, you know, there beginning as a sort of seed and began to grow and I actually didn't do anything about it until I was at Nottingham University.

Presenter10:41

And you weren't reading theology first, were you?

David Hope10:42

I did read theology, yes I did read theology.

Presenter10:44

At first, did you?

David Hope10:45

Yes, it did. I had intended to go and read either history or geography, but I came across when I went for an interview there Alan Richardson, who said, Why do you not come and read theology? And I don't know quite you know, how these things happen why this happened, I do not know, but I think God had something to do with it somehow or another.

Presenter10:46

How do you

David Hope11:03

But it just seeped into you, did it, this feeling that you

Presenter11:05

You should take holy order.

David Hope11:06

Yeah, I think looking back, I mean, I think that being part of the cathedral choir and serving and well, I like to think that it was the way in which God was actually working in me to prepare me

David Hope11:19

Uh for ordination.

Presenter11:22

Record number three.

David Hope11:23

Well, I've chosen now as my third uh record a Romanian carol, O Cheveste Minunate, um simply because I spent a bit of time in uh Romania and uh

David Hope11:35

I remember me hearing this carol two days before Christmas in the Communist State, and it was it just struck me as being so transformative really, the music and the words, simply telling the story of how Mary and Joseph make their way to Bethlehem and in the stable Mary gives birth to the Son of God.

Speaker 312:02

We are suffering God.

Speaker 312:18

And touch it on a watchman they may see.

Speaker 312:27

Don't make love for us.

Speaker 312:31

Look at all the sea.

Presenter12:39

O cheveste minunate oh what wonderful tidings sung by the faro Viaria choir conducted by Adrian Corian.

Presenter12:46

So you went out there to Rouenia, David Hope, two years after you'd spent uh as a curate in Liverpool, behind the iron curtain in Bucharest, Ceaușescu's Rouenia. That must have been quite difficult, difficult for Christians to come and practise, have been.

David Hope12:59

It was a very difficult uh time, actually, and um uh and of course the church um uh under considerable surveillance and suspicion, though Ceausesco didn't operate a policy of closing down the churches. But people would have had

Presenter13:12

But people would have had to have thought twice before they came.

David Hope13:13

Oh yes, they were except that they were there in huge numbers on Sundays.

Presenter13:19

But you've said it was on the whole a transforming experience. There was something about this Orthodox Christian Church that that really touched

David Hope13:24

Yeah.

David Hope13:25

Oh, there was. There was. Again, I think the sort of whole theological basis of uh orthodoxy appeals to me. Um the sense that, you know, here you are, surrounded by the icons and the frescoes, you go into the church, you you are on the way into heaven, and there's the iconestasis in the church, and there's this constant dialogue between as it were from behind the iconestasis in the front where all the people are, and it's a dialogue between heaven and earth. You have glimpses of glory, the glory of God.

Presenter14:00

So it's that sense of the eternal invading the temporal all of the times.

David Hope14:02

There is invading the temporal all of the time.

Presenter14:05

That's that's really and that's formed very much where you come from, isn't it, as part of of your faith. It's very traditionalist faith that you have.

David Hope14:09

Yeah.

David Hope14:12

It's very

David Hope14:14

Yeah, yeah, it is.'Cause I can't see that that, you know, eternity and the temporal are two separate things. The one is embraced in and by the other. It's all part of the same thing.

Presenter14:28

So you were heavily influenced by all of that. You came home and it does seem that you were quickly spotted as being someone who could pour oil on troubled waters, as it were. You were sent off you were appointed principal of St. Stephen's House in Oxford, one of the key theological colleges. Things were apparently getting out of hand there. What was going wrong?

David Hope14:46

Well, there was all sorts of uh indiscipline and indeed I did hardly recognised it as the place at which I had trained, where, in a sense, the discipline had been very strict indeed.

Presenter14:56

Mm. And they weren't turning up for chap.

David Hope14:58

No, no, no, they weren't. And I mean, that was the key that was the key feature of my own training, and it's been a key feature, I think, of my life, is that departure point in the morning that you spend that time on your knees, you know, with the Lord, and that's a that's a non negotiable thing for me.

Speaker 315:16

Uh

David Hope15:16

Maybe it's, um but but uh th th th yeah, I mean that w the oh, it w it was very slack really, so I had to institute a pretty, um pretty uh you know, disciplined regime.

Presenter15:27

It was also said, though, that there was homosexual activity at that time there, too.

David Hope15:31

It was said there was that, yes. I mean, whether there was or not, I I never knew, but

Presenter15:35

But you may play what your views are.

David Hope15:36

Fusella.

Presenter15:37

You you you just said we we simply cannot have a software.

David Hope15:39

This is not acceptable, yes.

Presenter15:41

Let's have another record, and number four.

David Hope15:44

Well, I think I really must have among my selection a part of Bach's B minor Mass, which has always been a huge inspiration. And what better than the Sanctus, which does really speaks right from the very beginning, of the sheer holiness, the wonder, the beauty and the splendour of God.

Presenter17:00

Part of the sanctus from Bach's B minor Mass performed by the Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra led by Karl Richter. So, next stop would have a few years on really. You end up at All Saints Maryleburn in London, a church with a a big reputation in the Anglo-Catholic world. It too was in a spot of trouble and needed some sorting out. Come, what was the problem there?

David Hope17:19

Oh.

David Hope17:21

Well, very sadly, the the previous vicar had died of cancer. He'd become rather kind of charismatic in his latter years, and this hadn't suited some members of the congregation.

Presenter17:35

Yeah.

Presenter17:40

Yeah.

Presenter17:42

So it was Send for David Hope. It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, you you you must have felt you were getting a reputation by this time.

David Hope17:45

That means you you you

David Hope17:48

Oh yeah, it's again a bit yes. Yes, it was beginning to feel a bit like that.

Presenter17:52

But you didn't like leaving Yorkshire, did you?

David Hope17:52

Uh

David Hope17:53

No, not one bit. Well, s strangely enough, I'd said I would never ever work in London.

David Hope18:00

But you see there again, you know, this god of surprises turns up and says, Oh, no, well, you know, you're going to do as I tell you, not as you want.

Presenter18:07

And you got your reward, because then you were made Bishop of Wakefield. Well, if I don't know about reward.

David Hope18:11

Born, but I

David Hope18:13

That came again as a complete surprise.

Presenter18:15

But back to your roots. I it must have been a wonderful feeling. And and the w I mean, you were greeted back in Yorkshire, weren't you, as the sort of local lad who did good.

David Hope18:23

Oh good. Well, there was all that, yes. And the number of I mean legion of people who suddenly knew little David Hope when he was seven or eleven or something other else. I mean, it was amazing.

Presenter18:32

All those boys at Wakefield Grammar who'd teased you, hadn't they? Because you were in the choir and all the rest of the world.

David Hope18:37

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yes.

Presenter18:38

And there you were suddenly.

David Hope18:40

Yes, it was and it was a very strange experience being put in the bishop's throne at Wakefield, which is right opposite the uh choir stalls where I'd started out as a little probationer boy, looking across on those occasions when the bishop came, thinking it was either it was Father Christmas or God come down from heaven to earth. It was quite extraordinary.

Presenter18:40

Stop dog.

Presenter18:59

Never dreaming for a moment that you would I mean

David Hope19:01

Yeah.

David Hope19:02

Never never crossed my mind.

Presenter19:04

Mine. Yes, and there you were.

David Hope19:06

But, you know, God's got a good sense of humour, I think.

Presenter19:10

Require number five.

David Hope19:11

Uh I felt I couldn't let a programme like this go without uh on Oakley More Bar Tat. And again you've got a very good uh another very good uh brass band, the Black Dyke Mills band, which was actually in our church not all that long ago, to play it.

Presenter20:14

The Black Dyke Mills Band and on Ilkley Moor Bar Tat.

Presenter20:17

Then in nineteen ninety one you were created Bishop of London, David Hope. How did it go down up in Wakefield? They were going to lose you.

David Hope20:25

Well, I I don't think it went down all that well. Um the postman comes to the front door and said Oh he

Presenter20:30

What?

David Hope20:30

Being made Bishop of London, he said, Uh can you do it from up here?

David Hope20:36

Although I would that I could.

Presenter20:39

Well, what was to come, of course, was was an issue that bitterly divided the Church, which was over and still does, in fact, was over the ordination of women as priests then, and it's now as bishops.

Presenter20:49

As I said in the introduction, you never made it a secret of your

Presenter20:53

reservations about the ordination of women, but you did do your best to reconcile the two sides of the argument. Um did you as as bishop and then subsequently as archbishop, did you ever ordain a woman in those years that followed?

David Hope21:07

No, no, I I mean I made it clear that that that was not possible.

Presenter21:11

But you allowed other bishops in your diocese to do it as well.

David Hope21:14

Oh yes, because um the Church had made the decision for better or for worse, and uh it would not have been in the spirit of the church if uh I'd have um forbidden that, or not allowed it.

Presenter21:26

No, but presumably therefore you you remain now against women being made bishops. But it is highly likely to happen. It has to, logically, doesn't it, once they've been made?

David Hope21:31

Yeah.

David Hope21:36

Well, yes, I mean I'd always argue in theory if a person is able to be ordained to the ministerial priesthood, then in theory at any rate they ought to be able to be ordained to the uh to the episcopate. So

Presenter21:46

And in theory, therefore, if all goes forward, we could have a female Archbishop of Canterbury.

David Hope21:47

Emmy.

David Hope21:52

Well, you could, or a female Archbishop of York. Yes.

David Hope21:56

Well, the fundamental objection that I have is is basically one of authority and decision making until there is a substa we claim the Church of England claims to be part of the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. And until the whet there's the substantial consensus within the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church about this question, I still feel that it's inappropriate for us to move forward.

Presenter22:24

What you're saying, that everyone has to agree that women could rise to these positions, and if anyone disagrees.

David Hope22:28

Rights to these positions and if

David Hope22:31

Well, you have to have a substantial consensus, I would say.

Presenter22:35

And and how would that consensus

Presenter22:38

be in percentage terms right now. Is it possible to put a figure on it?

David Hope22:41

Oh, well, I mean, I think you've got to be pretty well ninety percent certain that this would be right.

David Hope22:46

the ministry is the glue of the church. We're in a a position where, um, you know, if a woman bishop, for example, comes over from America, it's not possible for her to exercise her episcopal order. I mean, it's it begins to

David Hope23:01

create a considerable degree of unsettlement, to say the least, in the church.

Speaker 323:06

Mm.

David Hope23:07

I mean, I have to say that that some of the correspondence which I received over that period

David Hope23:14

were so virulent.

David Hope23:16

On both sides, that at times I began to think, well, you know, what is this? What is this? What do we call a church? This isn't this is not the Christian church as I understand it.

Speaker 223:25

Resign.

David Hope23:27

And I think that you know w we owe a we have a duty to each other, and indeed to the world at large, to show that we are able to conduct these debates, however strongly we may feel, however passionately we may feel, in a courteous way which respects the dignity of the other person.

Presenter23:46

Yeah.

David Hope23:46

Record number six. And which has been a huge source both of solace and of inspiration to me, just to get away from everything and everyone. I think at some stage I'd rather entertain the view that I might have become a Trappist monk.

David Hope24:12

Uh and I'cause I rather enjoy my own my own solitude, but uh that's never happened. But this will remind me of those days.

Presenter25:19

It was part of Land of the Mountain and the Flood by Hamish McConnell played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martin Bravins. The bitterly divisive issue in which you were most publicly involved, David Hope, was the issue of gay priests when Peter Tatchell in 1995 of the gay pressure group Outrage wrote to you, challenged you, didn't he, to say that you were gay and that you would promote the cause of gay clergy. You called a press conference, you published this letter. It was a very brave move, some would say. How much heart-searching did it take to decide to do that?

David Hope25:55

Well, it took me quite a bit of uh thought and reflection, and I remember on the Friday before calling the press conference on the Monday, uh I'd already um made arrangements to go to Paris for a day, and I remember going into into Notre Dame Cathedral.

David Hope26:13

And the stations of the cross were in progress.

David Hope26:16

And uh I followed the stations, and I knew then that I had to do what I had to do.

David Hope26:23

And so I called press conference and um

David Hope26:28

That is history, so to speak.

Presenter26:30

Well, quite. But it it was you you had to you had to be frank about your personal life and you said your sexuality was a grey area and that you led a single and celibate life. The The Invasion of Your Privacy. thereby must again have been very distressing really.

David Hope26:47

Yes, it was, but I felt the letter was intimidatory, and I felt that there were um things in the letter which were uncalled for and unjust. And at the end of the day my Yorkshire upbringing uh means that I'm going to tough it out.

Presenter27:01

Hm. And it must have been considered right, because as I said in the introduction, it was within a few weeks that you were appointed Archbishop of York, wasn't it?

David Hope27:09

Yes, it's extraordinary.

Presenter27:10

S somebody somebody ad admired you. But

Presenter27:13

Where do you stand now on homosexuality in the Church? I mean, let's take, for example, Canon Geoffrey John, who was briefly appointed Bishop of Reading a couple of summers ago. He he'd been a student of yours, I think, hadn't he?

Speaker 327:24

Yeah.

Presenter27:25

He said he was in a stable relationship with another man.

Presenter27:29

And that he practised celibacy. That as I understand it, that's what he said.

Presenter27:34

Is that acceptable?

David Hope27:35

Well, the a document which the House of Bishops put out, and which with which I certainly would concur, is that if a person is not practising, then the orientation is is is to that extent irrelevant. That is that's perfectly acceptable.

Presenter27:54

But then, as we know, within the Anglican community as a whole, internationally, other things are going on. In the United States, practising gay priests are being appointed. It's an issue which threatens to split the Anglican Community is splitting the Anglican Community.

David Hope28:08

Well, oh yes, like the issue of the ordination of women and

David Hope28:13

A number of the same kinds of thoughts that I've just expressed about the ordination women and the debate and the nature of the debate and the conduct of the debate apply equally to the discussion on homosexuality. It's not I mean, I can't see either being resolved determinatively in you know, in the near in the near future. In your lifetime? No, not in my lifetime. No, I doubt it very much.

Presenter28:32

And yeah.

Presenter28:33

In your lifetime?

Presenter28:37

But then it's not surprising, is it, that the church

Presenter28:41

has dwindling congregations, it's not surprising that it can't attract people and inspire people because it's constantly looking at its own parochial problems.

David Hope28:51

Abs absolutely. I mean, it's this sort of inward looking church which uh seems constantly to be uh divided. And frankly, I mean, I find since I've gone back to the parish

Presenter28:55

Who's your

David Hope29:02

That these are issues which people don't talk about endlessly. I mean they're more concerned about, you know, their grandmother is dying or even their daughter is dying of it.

Presenter29:12

Or they're more concerned about world poverty and hunger and the war in Iran.

David Hope29:12

More than

David Hope29:15

Oh, and the war in Iraq. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, yeah. So until we begin to address some of these bigger questions, which I said again on numerous occasions, look out.

Presenter29:27

But you hold no hope for that. You say that it's not going to happen in your lifetime. Well, it is. The church is that the Anglican community is going to go on thrashing around over homosexual priests and and

David Hope29:32

Well enough.

David Hope29:37

I doubt whether she'll get very much further with either of those issues.

Presenter29:38

Creating women bishops.

Presenter29:42

And is that part of why you decided to cease to be Archbishop of York, that suddenly

Presenter29:50

It's out of a kind of frustration, really, that whatever and however many committees you sat on, and however much talking, however many papers were produced,

David Hope29:58

Yeah.

Presenter29:58

No headway was made.

David Hope30:00

No, you go round and round in circles. I mean there are mountains of paper produced, and you hear the same old arguments time and again. You can tell who's going to talk and who's going to say what. You think, well, you know, what's the purpose of it all?

David Hope30:13

Put number seven.

David Hope30:14

Well, I think after all that we need something to lift our eyes and raise our spirits. Um and so I've chosen uh part of Mendelssohn's Elijah, and I've always found in the psalm, you know, I will lift up mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. I mean, that's a great psalm of hope and encouragement and it's reflected here in the in um

David Hope30:35

um Mendelssohn's Elijah Lift Thine Eyes, O Lift Thine Eyes uh performed by the what they call in Yorkshire the Oddersfield.

Speaker 331:38

Let's keep it going.

Presenter32:34

That's Lift Thine Eyes to the Mountains, part of Mendelssohn's Elijah, performed by the Huddersfield Choral Society, the Uddersfield, with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent.

Presenter32:46

Father David, it's back to the summer fate and the Friday morning mother and toddler group and

David Hope32:49

Yeah.

David Hope32:51

Christmas Fair on Saturday.

Presenter32:53

All that.

Presenter32:54

And you've got more time, more time to walk the hills and to hanker after fast cars, I gather. This is it. We've finally arrived at the the weakness, have we?

Speaker 333:02

The weakness

David Hope33:03

In the morning

Presenter33:05

In the moral fiber of this man.

David Hope33:06

Yeah, well, I know, it's terrible. So much so that uh a a Sunday newspaper did an article. When they came to do the interview, nobody told me. I opened the door, there was this lotus in front of the vicarage door, and then they insisted on taking it round to the church for a photograph, and I think people thought I'd gone mad. Dressed me up in a cassock and cotton, my priestly gear, to sit in front of this thing.

David Hope33:31

Yeah.

Presenter33:31

But how was it? How was it the Lotus?

David Hope33:31

But how was it?

David Hope33:34

Fantastic. But of course we're in a thirty mile area so I couldn't uh I couldn't rev it too much.

Presenter33:40

But that's what you'd really like for Christmas, is it? A yellow lotus.

David Hope33:43

Might be a bit it might be a bit over over the top in Ilsey.

Presenter33:49

Last record.

David Hope33:50

Uh well, I'd like um part of Rachmaninoff's Vespers, and there's a beautiful part, the Ave Maria, which actually takes us to the figure of the Virgin, and it speaks of, you know, the beauty and the wonder and the love of God uh for his creation and for the whole human family.

Presenter34:55

It was the Aave Maria from Rachmaninoff's Vespers, performed by the Berlin Radio Chorus and Orchestra led by Robin Gritten.

Presenter35:02

If you could only take one of those eight records, David, which one would you take?

David Hope35:08

I think I would want to take the last one.

Presenter35:10

Mm. It's beautiful, isn't it?

Presenter35:13

And we give you a book. We give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What one other book would you like?

David Hope35:20

Oh, the Pickwick Papers.

David Hope35:22

Quick papers.

Presenter35:23

and a luxury.

David Hope35:25

Case

David Hope35:26

of selected malt whiskies.

Presenter35:30

David Hope, Father David, Lord Hope of Thorns, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

David Hope35:36

A two.

Presenter35:37

And happy Christmas.

David Hope35:38

And to you too.

Speaker 235:46

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.