Dumbledore and Dobby

Justin Welby was in a light-hearted mood at a special reception held at Lambeth Palace to launch the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lent book, which this year is Looking Through the Cross by Graham Tomlin. As well as Dean of St Mellitus College, Tomlin is also Principal of St Paul’s Theological Centre at Holy Trinity, Brompton, and lots of the Archbishop’s friends from HTB were at the gathering. He seized on the fact that the Lent book shares the Bloomsbury imprint with the Harry Potter books to suggest that his predecessor, Rowan Williams, could be seen as Dumbledore while he was more like Dobby. Dumbledore is headmaster of the Hogwarts school of wizarding and JK Rowling says she imagines him humming to himself a lot. Dobby is a house elf who gets death threats five times a day.