Basil Hume: Spiritual celebrity in secular Britain

29 May 2006

Basil Hume: The Monk Cardinal, Anthony Howard. Hodder Headline, 2005.

ISBN 0755312473

Apparently the Queen referred to the late Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster, as ‘my cardinal’. Clearly many Britons felt the same. Just before he died in 1999, she spent half an hour with him when investing him with the Order of Merit. According to his confessor, they talked about 'death, suffering, the after life – that sort of thing'. The author of this authorised biography, political writer Anthony Howard, former editor of the New Statesman and the Listener, points out how rare this is. At the one time it is a sad reflection on the remoteness of the British monarchy that the sovereign has so little time with her most eminent subjects, and an endorsement of the special qualities of this remarkable man.

Why should this book about an English cardinal who died in 1999 interest readers in Australia? The answer is that Basil Hume died as one of the most respected religious figures of the 20th century in Britain, and had an international reputation as well. He was often reported to be more popular than successive archbishops of Canterbury. He was able to balance London and Rome without losing local liberals, or incurring curial and papal ire. He was seriously considered papabile, although the year of the three popes came too early for him. He was the calm voice of Catholic Christianity in England on many contentious social and political issues, and was associated with the prolonged, uncomfortable and ultimately successful challenge to the British justice system posed by the case of the Guildford Four. Such public spiritual presence and moral courage always attract attention and curiosity.

In an age where celebrity is everything, it seems that Basil Hume was a household name of a rare kind: a spiritual celebrity in secular Britain, even at Buckingham Palace. Perhaps unfairly I hoped this book would help to unpack the essence of this spiritual man, and even more so, illuminate the nature of a spiritual character itself. In this I was both disappointed and enthralled. The book is a rattling good read for those who like political biography, and this after all is the writer’s genre. But the disappointment comes from his inability to grasp and reveal the spiritual man. On further thought, this is perhaps a naïve and unreasonable expectation to have of any such work. In fact the spiritual dimension of his character and

ARTS AND CULTURE

Basil Hume: Spiritual celebrity in secular Britain

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