How a stranger’s unexpected words stunned me with their wisdom

The recorded voice of a civil servant, who worked quietly in the background for peace, is hugely illuminating

It says something about Northern Ireland politics that I often find myself feeling more cheerful after writing about death. Life’s many coincidences lead us down unexpected paths. One day recently my wife came into the kitchen where I was listening to a podcast in which an English pensioner was talking about how to spend retirement. Having some decades to go before being relieved of the happy task of writing, I fear my wife thought me either feckless or delusional.

I was surprised myself, to be listening to what was filling my ears — and still more, to be so fascinated by it. By the most circuitous route, I had stumbled across what turned out to be wisdom from beyond the grave, imparted by a man whose name I’d never even heard until a few weeks ago, and about whom I still know very little.

This story starts in yellowing British government files held in the UK National Archives building at Kew, in south-west London.

In recent weeks, I have pored over thousands of pages in these declassified files, which can add so much to our understanding of Northern Ireland’s recent history, and to our knowledge of British-Irish relations. There’s something thrilling about finding a piece of paper with a revelation which changes your comprehension of recent history, or which questions received wisdom about a particular topic.

Understanding these civil service memos, diplomatic cables and minutes of meetings often requires understanding their authors. An individual’s status might give weight to their words.

Stephen Rickard, for instance, is listed in these documents as a Northern Ireland Office (NIO) civil servant, which he was — but he was also one of MI5’s most senior operatives in Belfast, something we know because he was killed in the Chinook helicopter crash in 1994, which devastated the top tier of British intelligence figures in Northern Ireland.

The most recently declassified files are from 2000 and 2001. Among them are many familiar names — Tony

Blair, his chief of staff Jonathan Powell, and private secretary (and future MI6 head) John Sawers. But there was one prominent name I didn’t recognise: William Fittall.

It was that name which led me down an unexpected path.

Fittall was one of the NIO’s most senior civil servants in the years after the Good Friday Agreement. Again and again, it was he who was the one talking to Gerry Adams, it was he who was the one briefing Tony Blair on sensitive issues, and it was he who was at the right hand of Peter

Mandelson and then John Reid, as those successive secretaries of state tried to save the agreement.

Intrigued, I searched for Fittall online. It turned out that he left the civil service just a year after this period, in 2002, and then spent 13 years as secretary general (the most senior administrator) of the Church of England’s general synod.

Prior to that, he had been a significant figure, trusted with some of Britain’s most sensitive secrets. In the mid-1990s, he was a member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, a body which ingests and analyses intelligence from MI5, MI6, and elsewhere.

While discovering all this, I happened upon a 2018 podcast in which Fittall talked about faith in retirement, reflecting on his life and on life itself. I was transfixed by his words; he spoke with humility, self-reflection and insight.

Here was a man who after a distinguished professional career was pondering the final chapter of his life. He talked about his love of music (he’d sung Bach’s Mass in B Minor the previous evening with his choir), his grandchildren, moving from London to the Kent coast, and about how one’s sense of perspective improves with age. He mentioned how the desire of combative younger people to win arguments can be seen as unimportant with maturity.

When asked if retirement was more fulfilling than being shackled to a work schedule, he counselled the importance of appreciating where we find ourselves.

“It’s very important all through life not to look back in a regretful way. I enjoyed my years at university, I enjoyed my years at school, I enjoyed pretty much all of the jobs I did… but I wouldn’t want to go back to them.”

Speaking in posh but not pretentious tones, Fittall expressed a gratitude which is often missing in modern society, where we are acutely aware of being deprived and acutely ignorant of our blessings.

“My generation has been favoured in many ways. I’m the generation that didn’t fight in world wars. My father fought in the Second World War, my grandfather in the First World War.

“We’re the generation that first went to university in large numbers, and it was free. We’re the generation who went into the job market and there was still an expectation that the job you went into would be available to you as you got older. And we are the generation that still had pretty generous pension arrangements — too generous, in fact, given the improvements in life expectancy.”

When asked about Silicon Valley’s quest for immortality, he was similarly insightful. “It seems to me that mortality is just built into the human condition. There is something rather pathetic and escapist about hoping that that may go away. We are promised eternal life — but it’s in eternity.”

He talked about observing more elderly people becoming frailer and requiring more humility to accept help, something he said was a challenge for those who had held senior positions of responsibility — but which as a Christian he hoped he could do, because Christianity rests on the premise of accepting God’s help.

Fittall never lived long into retirement to experience that problem. Two years ago, he died at the young age of just 68. At the end of the interview, he related the symbolic power of the view from his home across the local churchyard, where the graves of the parishioners are clustered around the place of worship.

“We don’t know — any of us — how long we have got, and we have got to make use of the time while we have got it,” he said.

We know all this intellectually. Even princes become kings and then perish from this mortal scene. But we often retain it as an abstract thought, rather than relating it to our own lives.

Far from being morbid, consideration of our end ought to give focus to our present. Because all of this will one day end, how much more should we cherish the gift of life?

As psychologist Carl Rogers once said: “Life is precious and vulnerable, so be wise with how you choose to spend it — because once death arrives, there’s no turning back.”

It’s very important all through life not to look back in a regretful way