A Pilgrim’s Progress

"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. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter 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."