A very close atmosphere
Andrew Barrow
A DEAN'S DIARY: WINCHESTER, 1987-1996 by Trevor Beeson SCAT Press, £19.95, pp. 234 This is rather a curate's egg of a book, extremely good in parts but terribly heavy- going from time to time. By the end of it, I was gasping for fresh air and vowing to steer clear of cathedral closes in future.
I have no quarrel with the author him- self, who emerges from these pages as a pleasant, broad-minded, hard-working and knowledgeable man of the world — didn't I once spot him having breakfast at the Ritz? — but this diary of his nine years as Dean of Winchester is far too preoccupied with financial matters, feasibility studies, endless fund-raising and `spin-off benefits' to make for an easy read. The people who hang around cathedrals and feature all too prominently in this book — helpers, guides, local businessmen, benefactors, conserva- tionists, assorted clerics and busybodies are a tiresome lot and it would take a diarist of Jim Lees-Milne's genius to breathe life into them.
Trevor Beeson is not a genius but he writes well in a rather restrained and schoolmasterly style. People feel 'badly let down', visit him 'in a somewhat emotional state' and take 'the gravest exception' to things. `Raw nerves' are touched, disasters are 'narrowly averted' and things come to `a pretty pass'. Only occasionally does he allow himself to make a joke, but when he does so — 'Human remains ought not to be kept indefinitely in cardboard boxes' the effect is magical. The author's other great preoccupation, besides 'the opening of wallets', is with the media. Even the removal firm who brings his things down to Winchester — he had previously served as Rector of St Margaret's, Westminster — are suspected of having two photographers in attendance `for prestige publicity purposes'. Then there is the 'urgent problem' of getting a telephone installed in his study. Soon we ' "Trickle down" is OK— "downpour", no.' are discussing the floodlighting of the cathedral, sundry mail shots, visual aids and live television transmissions. Later on comes the wonderful fuss over the Rave in the Nave, apparently brewed up by Paul Johnson in what was surely a semi-satirical article in the Daily Mail. And throughout his time at Winchester the Dean seems to have also remained a regular reader of the London Evening Standard even though he considers one of its leading contributors, the great A. N. Wilson, a liar and a fool. One wonders if these two holy men bumped into each other last year when Wilson was covering the 'frightful' trial of Mrs Rosemary West at Winchester Crown Court.
Perhaps not, but the Dean is, as I've said, a worldly fellow and brilliant networker whose vast circle of contacts seems to have even included 'that most sensitive soul Philip Toynbee'. Though he can make babyish remarks about Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Frost being 'known to be very wealthy', his eye for people's importance and usefulness is as a rule unerring. A severely disabled man being pushed up the aisle in a wheelchair turns out to be 'none other than the famous Pro- fessor Stephen Hawking' and a completely unknown Japanese man reappears 20 pages later as 'the celebrated fashion designer, Issey Miyake': what a pity the two-million- pound robes-and-vestment updating pro- ject eventually fell through.
And then of course there are the royals. Princess Margaret can still draw a crowd at Winchester and the Princess of Wales is praised for her dazzling combination of dignity and friendliness, but poor old Fer- gie gets rapped over the knuckles for addressing the Dean by his first name and then making two private telephone calls during a charity dinner. 'I don't know what all that was about,' tut-tuts her host.
For me, what this book seriously lacks is atmosphere, if not spirituality. For a for- mer clerk in the Met Office, Trevor Beeson seems surprisingly unaware of the passing of the seasons. Surely there were glorious summer days in the cathedral close and cosy winter nights in the deanery worth recording? Cucumber sandwiches are not featured once and Jesus Christ doesn't pop up until page 69 and not very often after- wards.
The best bits of this book are when the Dean dares to describe his poor wife's problems with Alzheimer's and some of his own little misfortunes. After a delightful dinner party on the outskirts of the city he is breathalysed and momentarily faces utter disgrace. During a night in a Roman Catholic girls' school in Chelmsford he suf- fers a 'panic attack'. On a happier note, there is an encounter with 'profiteroles with blue cheese' during a splendid dinner on board HMS Victory. A few more entries along these lines would have made all the difference to this worthwhile but slightly claustrophobic book.
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