Why All The Fuss About George Bell? A New Biography Explains
Many readers here must have been puzzled by what appears to be my obsession with the reputation of a long-dead Bishop of the Church of England. Few people under 60 can have heard much about George Bell until he reappeared in the papers last October, denounced as a child molester. Pictures began to appear of the late Bishop, a large-eyed, ingenuous face, perhaps a slightly silly face, the face of a shy, stammering, private man whose chief pleasures lay in poetry, who worked so hard that he barely knew what he was eating when he sat down to meals, and often forgot to finish his breakfast because he was so absorbed in ‘The Times’, a man so impractical that, having once done the washing up in the era of wartime austerity, he was forbidden to do it again, as nobody could find anything he had put away for weeks afterwards.
Why should anyone care about this odd forgotten figure?
I am sure this is the view the Church of England took when they chose to sacrifice Bishop Bell, chucking him off the back of the sledge to provide a diversion for the wolves hurrying close behind – the wolves howling (quite rightly) for justice for the many people known beyond doubt to have been sexually abused by Anglican clergy. Readers of that fine historical novel ‘Flashman at the Charge’ will recognise a reference.
But they were wrong. Quite a lot of people had not forgotten and they did care, as I discovered when I wrote an angry article in ‘The Spectator’ saying that the Bishop had been unfairly treated.
I soon found myself in touch with an impressive group of men and women who felt as I did – a Judge experienced in sex-abuse cases, a distinguished QC, leading figures, lay and ordained, embracing all currents in the Church of England, thoughtful, deeply knowledgeable and wise, a principled MP, a journalist of the first rank, a fine historian. These people swiftly turned my amateur outrage into a professional defence of a man we all – despite our political, religious and professional diversity – loved for his self-sacrificing honesty and courage, a rare and precious example, in any modern Church, of a man seeking to live as a Christian above all things. None of us had met him. Yet we all felt a dreadful injustice had been done. Also in this group, as one of its most effective, hard-working and diligent members, was Andrew Chandler, George Bell’s biographer, whom I had met some years ago during the recording of a programme in the BBC Radio 4 ‘Great Lives’ series, in which I had nominated George Bell for that title.
Andrew was nearing the completion of his work, and amazed to find he was suddenly in the midst of a controversy he had never anticipated. As one of the greatest living experts on George Bell’s life he simply could not square the allegations against his subject with anything he knew of him. This was a person who was absolutely dedicated to the truth, and a complete stranger to self-indulgence.
Obviously, Andrew claims to know nothing about George Bell’s private life. Who now does? That is why any claims about it must be treated with care.
But we do know that this was a Bishop, well-paid by the standards of the time, who wrote several profitable books, yet left less than £4,000 in his will, presumably because he had given so much away. We know (not from George Bell, but from a witness) that he once gave (gave, not lent) his coat to an Indian visitor who was suffering from the cold. We know that he travelled third-class by train and that, if by any chance he found the ticket office closed and could not buy a ticket, he would go to great lengths to make sure he paid the fare afterwards.
Repeatedly, he adopted and spoke up for very unpopular causes, because he thought them right. I do not personally agree with some of these causes (especially his opposition to Capital Punishment) and I am not sure about some of his interventions against prosecutions of various German figures for alleged war crimes, after 1945. This was never about politics. But what I recognise in all these actions is a readiness to stand forward and speak out when he believed an injustice or a wrong was being done, not later, when the issue was dead , but at the time when it mattered. I doubt whether any such person could always be right in his choice of cause. I think he would always be right to follow his conscience.
The whispered secrecy of child abuse, and its disgusting pleasure at the expense of an innocent and powerless person, were not compatible with anything Andrew Chandler knew about George Bell. And, unlike the nameless Church ‘experts’ who condemned Bishop bell, Andrew Chandler has spent long weeks studying the great Bell archive at Lambeth palace, and has spoken to people who knew Bishop Bell well and worked closely with him *at the time of the alleged crimes*.
His biography, stylishly and clearly written in elegant English, soberly honest about George Bell’s failings as well as about his nobility, has now been published. It contains an appendix, written just before the presses began to move, in which the allegations are thoughtfully discussed. It is not a sycophantic hagiography. It is mainly political, and historical. It brings back to life the turbulent years of the mid-20th century during which men and women much tougher than we are were compelled to make moral choices which might lead them to death or ruin. It was a more serious time than our own, populated by characters very different from us. The Bishop’s Palace at Chichester might have appeared more serene, lost in an English dream of peace. But the harsh yelling of fanatics, and the howl and roar of bombs, were not as far away as they seemed. Rather than waiting for evil to come to him, George Bell went out to meet it with a full heart. As you turn its pages, you will hear the sounds and voices, the noise of battle from that era, very clearly. And you will, I hope, understand why his reputation is worth restoring.
I strongly recommend it
George Bell, Bishop of Chichester: Church, State, and Resistance in the Age of Dictatorship, by Andrew Chandler, published by William B. Eerdmans. ISBN: 978-0802872272