Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Bishop of Chelmsford and a Lord Spiritual who gave Holy Communion to the King and Queen at the coronation.
On the island
Eight records
RequiemFavourite
Stephen Varcoe, Cambridge Singers, City of London Sinfonia, John Rutter
It's one of the earliest pieces of Western classical music that I came to know and love, and it's punctuated my life at various points.
Traditional / Morteza Neydavoud (melody), Mohammad-Taqi Bahar (poem)
It's become a little bit like a protest song, an anthem for the struggles of freedom. And every time I hear it, I can still hear my dad kind of humming along to it.
So this really takes me back to the initial training period in the BBC. … a lot of fun was had during that time and all I can say is that this piece reminds me of those days.
Jack Liebeck, Alexander Chaushian, Ashley Wass
This is a piece that I remember the three of them playing together, particularly during the lockdown where there was a lot of opportunity to play music together.
Gabriel Francis-Dehqani, Fiona Sweeney, Krzysztof Cahoot, Will Harmer
Bahram Dehqani-Tafti (melody), David Peacock (arr.)
This next piece was originally composed as a hymn tune by my brother Bahram for words that were written by my father. … The cellist on this recording is my eldest son, Gabriel.
So this is for my husband really and it would remind me of him. … also reminds me that religion and the church which should be a place of healing sadly often causes a lot of hurt as well.
This track in particular will remind me of Family Holidays, driving in the car with this blaring at full volume, all of us singing along.
Golnoosh Shahiar (music), Ahmad Shamlou (poem)
She seems to me to express something of my desire to find my own voice, to make something positive out of a feeling of not quite belonging.
In conversation
Presenter asks
6:13Tell me a little bit more about your dad. Your father [Hassan] is a man of enormous faith, and that was the driving force in his life. But what else do we need to know about him? How would you describe him?
He was very tenacious, he had a deep sense of justice. He came from a very small village in the centre of Iran called Taft, from a very devout religious Muslim family. His mother encountered the British missionaries and trained as a nurse in one of the hospitals that they had set up … [s]he died when he was very young, and her dying wish was that her eldest son should have the opportunity to be educated by the missionaries.
Presenter asks
23:17How did you manage to adjust to life in the UK?
It was a real culture shock. Although I spoke English, my English was rusty. I wasn't that comfortable using it. But, you know, I suddenly had opportunities that I'd never had before and I I was really keen to grab those opportunities. I got involved in the music and the drama and the sport and so on. I was much more interested in those things really than the academic stuff. So yeah, it became the springboard from which the rest of my life developed in this country.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Ferdowsi
I've chosen to take with me the Shah Naumeh, which in English is the Book of Kings. This is a seminal work within the canon of Persian literature. It's a 10th century epic poem by the famous Persian poet called Ferdo Si, and it tells the story of pre-Islamic Iran or Persia. And it combines myth and legend and history. I grew up knowing some of the stories, but I've never read it.
The luxury
I'd like to take my photograph albums. I'm a great lover of printing out my photos and putting them into albums, so it would make me feel connected to those that I've left behind. And also, if I had a supply of blank albums, I'd have the time to catch up over the past few years. Many photos have been left still out of the album.
By 1989 you graduated from Nottingham University with a music degree, then worked as a sound engineer for the BBC. How did that more spiritual path that you took after that develop?
I think as I was growing up in my late teens, I kind of tried, I think, to leave all of that behind and walk away from faith, but I just couldn't quite do it. … [I]t wasn't until later, in my late 20s, after I'd got married, that I was at a bit of a crossroads. I'd left the BBC in order to move out of London with my husband, who was training to be ordained. And I had assumed that this would now be the opportunity to have children, and that wasn't happening. … I was also doing my doctorate studies on the role of, particularly of women missionaries in Iran … And the more I learned and the more I studied about my homeland and Iran, the bigger the gap felt, the inability to go back almost became like an ache, a physical ache. … I remember a sense of a determination that however painful this is, I've got to and I will find a positive way through.
Presenter asks
26:20You were the first woman from an ethnic minority background to be ordained as an Anglican bishop in the UK. What did that mean to you personally?
Well, it came from left field really, and yet in a very strange way, it made sense. I had this feeling that it was clearly not about what I'd done in terms of experience in the church. It was about my life experiences and what that might have to contribute now within the context of the Church of England. So I kind of feel I represent something way beyond myself … it's symbolic of pulling something from the boundaries into the middle, you know, this small, tiny Anglican community in the middle of nowhere. Through me now, kind of almost at the heart of the establishment here. It's bizarre, it still surprises me, but I feel that quite strongly and I feel a sense of responsibility with it. … for the Church of England, we have lots to learn from persecuted smaller Christian communities. And I hope that partly through my story I'm able to weave those threads together.
Presenter asks
31:00When you're trying to make sense of a story as enormous as yours, how do you manage to strike that balance of processing what's happened and then going 'okay, and now I'm going to put that aside and go forward'?
There is much in my past that I'm proud of. It's shaped me, it's made me who I am. And there are also painful, difficult bits, but none of it defines me and I try to be open to new experiences, new understandings, new ways of learning, and new ways of being.
“The challenge has been to not get stuck in that place.”
“[B]eing both fully Christian but also fully Persian. Because in Iran, you know, national and cultural and religious identity are very closely bound up. So to have seen to betray your faith is in a sense to be a betrayer of your nationality and culture. And so he became a bit of an outsider in his own country.”
“In a sense, it was his sacrifice that brought us here. I don't think my mum and my sister and I would have left if we hadn't had a very good reason to. So, he gave us the gift of the chance of a new life in this country.”
“For the church of England, we have lots to learn from persecuted smaller Christian communities. And I hope that partly through my story I'm able to weave those threads together.”
“[T]here's no good clinging on to the past. New life only comes sometimes when some things die and are let go of.”
“There is much in my past that I'm proud of. It's shaped me, it's made me who I am. And there are also painful, difficult bits, but none of it defines me and I try to be open to new experiences, new understandings, new ways of learning, and new ways of being.”