A Book of English Belief

"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. 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."