A rare insight into the Duke as religious thinker
Listeners weren’t offered much in the way of choice on Friday. At noon, the BBC’S national and local stations were interrupted to air the same extended tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh. Some handled the transition more smoothly than others. The awkwardness with which BBC Radio 1 Dance cut from Classic Dance Anthems to God Save the Queen (admittedly a classic anthem) has already inspired several viral remixes from wags online.
But after the hours of simulcast tributes and interviews – what then? The music stations were in a difficult position: would returning to the usual pop look insensitive? By late afternoon, Radio 1 had found a compromise. It was back playing music, but a noticeably more downbeat selection than usual.
The BBC has catered well to those who hated its programming in the wake of Prince Philip’s death (launching a new webpage for complaints) but not to those who loved it. Anyone who was moved by Friday evening’s musical line-up on Radio 1 or 2, and would like to hear it again, has been left in the lurch: it has all been mysteriously scrubbed from BBC Sounds, as if it never existed.
Radio 4, meanwhile, had its own challenge. After Friday’s exhaustive coverage, could there be anything left to say about Prince Philip? As it happens, yes. Sunday (Radio 4, Sunday) and Beyond Belief (Radio 4, Monday) offered a new perspective by looking at the Duke’s life through the lens of religion.
“The first time I arrived as Bishop of Norwich at Sandringham and went into the house, his first words to me were ‘Are you happy-clappy?’” recalled Graham James, who soon learnt to expect a grilling after his sermons.
Prince Philip’s faith was also at the heart of his environmentalism: he believed we have an urgent moral duty to protect God’s creation. As he quipped to the Rabbi Jonathan Romain, “You can knock down Westminster Abbey and rebuild it, but once the dodo’s gone, that’s it.”
The Duke’s greatest legacy, both programmes suggested, is as a leader of interfaith dialogue. It’s perhaps unsurprising, given his own family connections. Few people can say they are married to the head of one faith, the great-nephew of a saint in another, and a living god in a third (the latter being the religion of the Tanna people of Vanuatu).
The Duke founded St George’s House, Windsor, in 1966 as a place for frank, vigorous discussion across religious and political divides. He “adored” arguing with Taoists, said his religious adviser Martin Palmer. “If you wanted to have a really good argument, he was the ideal person to do it with.” Through the conversations that took place at St George’s, the Duke helped to broker peace between Christian groups in the Northwest of India and the Indian government, “almost by accident”, said Palmer.
By bringing together a group of world-leading experts, and asking them sharp questions as a curious, no-nonsense layman, the Duke essentially did at St George’s what Melvyn Bragg does every week in In Our Time (Radio 4, Thursday). Last month, it quietly celebrated its 900th dizzyingly highbrow episode, and the latest instalment, on French mathematician Pierre-simon Laplace, was a fine example of the show at its best. Covering everything from determinism to demons to decimal time (and the havoc its brief popularity caused in the clock-making industry), by the end of the show’s 45 minutes I felt stuffed to the gills with knowledge.
I wish I could say the same for former Woman’s Hour presenter Jane Garvey’s Life Changing (Radio 4, Wednesday). The first episode felt like a 10-minute Woman’s Hour segment stretched to half an hour, yet still left obvious questions unanswered.
“What happened to you was really, really, really, really, really rare,” Garvey told her guest, Grace Spence Green. What happened to Green was tiptoed around, to build intrigue, but given away by the episode title: A Falling Man Left Me Paralysed
Green, a medical student, came across as an inspirational figure, but we were left wondering about the headline event. Was it an accident? A botched suicide attempt? We should have been told, for instance, that a judge concluded the man had used his body “as a weapon”, deliberately jumping from a place where it was almost certain he would hit someone. This context is surely relevant to Green’s story; it makes her lack of anger towards him all the more remarkable. Garvey offered plenty of sympathy, but I’d have liked a few more facts.
Charlotte Runcie is away