4/16/2023 0 Comments Eldest souls reviews![]() ![]() ![]() His jocular prose is at its best when not striving for effect – as, for example, when he describes a mayor destined ‘to spend a year opening new bus shelters while dressed, inexplicably, as a Tudor’. He remains tight-lipped about the identity of the Oscar-winning actor who sniggered at the penile imagery.īutler-Gallie finds the humour in such moments and ably conveys it. As for baptisms, it comes as a surprise to learn that people find a sexual connotation to the ‘purple-headed mountain’ in the popular Victorian hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. ![]() Like many clergy, he expresses a preference for the latter. Weddings and funerals feature prominently. Even more surprising is the response of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie to an ordinand who proposed to give up masturbation for Lent: ‘Well, what a wonderful way to spend Easter morning.’ The book is replete with such stories, frequently with erotic undertones, as when he presides at a carol service which features the semi-nude performance of the Fire Brigade Dance Troupe, flaunting their ‘bulging pectorals’ to the backing track of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’. He describes how one of his friends, a ‘strapping rower turned cleric’, was mercilessly groped in a pub by a hen party, who refused to believe he wasn’t a stripper. Such confusions appear to be an occupational hazard. He has been a repeated victim of mistaken identity: on New Year’s Eve, he was taken for a drug dealer and, on Holy Saturday, for a blind man. He writes that he is the eldest of five children his mother is a doctor, his father was an army officer whose forebears fought at Waterloo, and his grandmother was a messy eater. Above all, it is a rich store of anecdotes, both sacred and profane.īutler-Gallie is careful not to reveal too much personal information. It is loosely structured around the major church festivals, while at the same time making a case for some of the lesser known ones, such as Epiphany. The book is an account of a year in his life as a young curate at the Church of Our Lady and St Nicholas in Liverpool. On New Year’s Eve he was taken for a drug dealer, and on Holy Saturday for a blind man In Touching Cloth, he focuses on a contemporary eccentric: himself. In A Field Guide to the English Clergy (2018), the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie offered an amusing and informative survey of some of the more eccentric priests and prelates to have served the Church of England over the years. ![]()
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