Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Why have you chosen that?

Well, first of all it makes me happy. I had to go into hospital to have one of those X-rays that people have. Everyone else got dismissed and was told they were fine, but I was told to come back at two o’clock and not be late, so I came back rather apprehensively as nobody had told me anything about what was happening or what was wrong and I tut-tutted, and finally I grabbed the nurse and said: ‘What’s wrong.’ He said: ‘Well, there’s a big, black something or other on your lung.’ I said: ‘Well, is it cancer?’ He just rushed off and about three quarters of an hour later they told me I could go home, and I said: ‘Aren’t you going to tell me what the black mark is?’ They said: ‘Fortunately, we managed to find an old X-ray of yours at the hospital from years ago with the same big black something, so we think you must have had tuberculosis as a kid and that has calcified.’

What happened was that while I was waiting I had all my library books in my briefcase and I had to read something. I had the Bible and I had Anita Loos, and I read her and I giggled and giggled and giggled. I always remember her interview on the BBC when she was a very old lady indeed. They asked her: ‘Miss Loos, if you wrote your book again now, are there any changes you’d like to make in it?’ She said: ‘Yeah, these days I’d call it Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen.

Next book.

This is called A Book of English Belief and it’s by Joanna Mary Hughes. She was my girlfriend – the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a girlfriend – and we nearly got married but didn’t. There were too many difficulties, I think. For one thing I was gay, but what the two of us knew about sex then could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. Of course it was the late 1940s, early 1950s, and things were not discussable at that time. She introduced me to English belief and English religion. I realised I had two inheritances. I had the holy Jewish tradition but also my contact with her made me very English, not just in a superficial sense. I began to realise what English religion and English spirituality was really about.

What is the difference between English belief and English religion?

Well, I think Joanna showed me the most extraordinary range of people, like Sidney Smith who said that paradise was eating pâté to the sound of trumpets, and I fell in love with the poems of George Herbert – particularly the one where someone comes into the room and it’s love itself. Love opens itself to you and says, I’m yours, come and eat with me and you shall never be alone again.

Something like that happened to me when I was looking after Jewish congregations and I ended up in a little hotel in Germany and everyone seemed to be happy and I wasn’t very well. I was snivelling away in a room and feeling desolate and suddenly that poem came into my head and, instead of being angry with everybody around about, I suddenly felt blessed and that something had come into my life. I had dinner with love and instead of moping I ran back and thought of all the people who needed a phone call from me because they were lonelier than I was.

Do you see that as a particularly English spirituality?

Yes, because all the best English stuff is said so simply with no long theological words or going over the top. It’s gentle stuff. Like Pilgrim’s Progress, because that’s a book which has stuck with me throughout my life. And now that I’m over 80 I’m reading more and more the part where Christian and Christiana are preparing themselves to go across the River of Death and get to the Celestial City, and he gives an account of all the people who are trying to go across that river and the different ways that they approach it. It’s an incredible amount of good sense and observation. There’s lovely lines in it about one really nice chap who looked at the city and the trumpets sounded for him on the other side and a very melancholy lady who wandered into the river crooning tunes and nobody knew what she meant. I went to Bedford and I stood on the banks of the River Ouse, trying to imagine myself as Bunyan looking at the Celestial City and a swan nearly attacked me. Which just shows you. So that’s a book I wanted.

Then, I suppose I should be ashamed of this but I’m not, I like stories with a happy ending. As a minister you get an awful lot of problems slung at you and the problems can stay in your mind and you can’t get to sleep, so I’ve found that Mills & Boon gave me the happy endings I wanted and I managed to fall asleep thinking that the world might be a much nicer place.