Happened on saturday. At least 32 children were among 125 people who died in a crush the police have been widely criticised for using tear gas on the fans. Now on bbc news hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk. Im stephen sackur. Britain mourned the death of Queen Elizabeth in ways that combined the intimate and the personal with the grand and ceremonial. For most of us, of course, death and grief remain a very private affair. An irreversible, Life Altering shock when we lose someone close for which there is no guide or preparation. My guest today is the one time pop star Turned Church Of England vicar, the Reverend Richard coles, whose frank account of his own grief has struck a chord with many. Why did grief nearly break him . Richard coles, welcome to hardtalk. Britain has just lived through a rather extraordinary, momentous experience, the death of Queen Elizabeth, the mourning that came with it. And many people have said that the death of the queen revived very sharp memories for them of their own losses and how they felt during their own losses. Youve just written a book about grief. Is that true of you, too . Oh, yes, very much so. I think the queen had a representative life as well as a sort of constitutional life and a personal life. And her loss is a loss we all experience. People say, oh, but you didnt know her, but of course, we all did know her from banknotes, from stamps, from simplyjust being there, the christmas message. And that absence affects all of us. And any absence will elicit in you your own experience of grief, reviving your own experience of grief, i think. I remember when Princess Diana died, having a look at all the books of condolence in stjames� s palace. And it was full of stuff that people were writing about their own loss, that they could all of a sudden then add to this big public loss. And there was just a wider acknowledgement of these powerful and sometimes quite troubling feelings. Collective grief is one thing, very private grief is another. I just wonder whether you think, when you reflect on your own loss, and you have written very frankly about it, was it something you felt able to share, that you wanted to share or did you turn inward . I dont really know, actually, stephen. I dont remember anything about writing the book at all. So david died just before christmas 2019, and so i was wiped out by that. And then we went into lockdown. So grief is itself a sort of personal lockdown. And then the world went into lockdown, too. So like lots of people, i found myself sitting at home, not really able to do anything. And i think one of the things thats quite common with people who are bereaved, is you, i did feel this desire to hang on to as much of him as i could because i could sense him beginning to fade, beginning to disappear. And lots of people whove been bereaved will tell you this fear, the first time you fear it, that you will forget how someone talked, how they smelled, how they walked. So i wanted to kind of write that down as a way of fixing it, i think. Also, writers going to write, it is what you do, but i dont remember writing the book at all. It was almost like a, not quite a trance exactly, but i wrote it out of intense feeling. Can you, do you think, prepare for loss, for absence of your closest loved partner . No, i think, i thought you could, actually. And also as a vicar, i spent a lot of my time with people who were going through that. So i knew what it looked like. I know the technicalities, registering a death, the coroners office, all that kind of stuff, probate. But of course, thats from the outside. And when, of course, it happens to you, its completely different. And it is, for me, it was like a depth charge that sort of blew up and disrupted all the surface, but also stuff that was very, very deep within came up and sent me completely mad for a while. I remember going to, the day david died, i went to the co op on the way back from the hospital because i had to buy milk and bread. And when i got home i looked in my shopping bag and id bought three kinds of parmesan. Its funny the metaphors you use, the depth charge, youve talked about the explosive effect of it all, and indeed the title of the book, the madness of grief. It is very striking. Do you really think, and of course, were going back sort of three years now, youve had time to reflect on it, do you think you really did go mad for a while . Yeah, i think so. And it really made me understand how im sometimes a bit puzzled by grieving people, by these odd surges of anger or odd failure to grasp what, to me, would be an obvious reality. And i realise now that your perception, your cognition, all that stuff goes a bit a bit haywire. The one thing in it that kind of is solid, is the experience of other widows and widowers. So that was really good. I didnt want people to tell me what i should feel, you know, theres lots of people who do that and lots of online stuff that would do that. I wanted people to walk alongside people whod been through the same thing. Just say, what was it like for you . That was the stuff that was kind of solid. I wonder if you still feel lost in a way, because youve done lots of important things since david died. Youve moved, the village you were rooted in as the vicar of the parish with david, your partner, living in the vicarage with you. That was such an important part of your married life. And now youre not there. Youve gone somewhere different and youve left behind so much that linked you to him. Yeah. I mean, ifeela bit like a floating voter, i think, after a sort of tribal loyalty to a political party. So, the landscapes different, literally different, the routine is different. But i think i realised quite early on with david was that i, theres a point where you think, well, im going to have to face forward and stand up, stand up and face forward even. And that involves an acknowledgement of loss. And its also involves a willingness to embrace a future without that person, which is a big deal, actually. But i sort ofjust have to do this, so. Youve said that death brought up many difficult feelings from deep within you. And i think one of them, its fair to say, and again, youre very frank about it, is guilt. Guilt about how you and david lived together. He, as you say and describe in very painful detail, was an alcoholic. And that was very much related to the Health Problems that led to his death at a3. And you describe how once he died, you felt terrible, that you at times had not been understanding about his illness. Yeah. I mean, anyone whos lived with an addict will know what thats like, i think. And at first, when his addiction began to shape our life very dramatically, all i could think of is, why are you doing this . Why are you raising that glass to your lips . You dont have to do that. And when you do that, you destroy yourself and me and everything thats good in our lives. You were angry . Furious. Yeah, absolutely. The other thing about it is that alcohol produces unreason. And if youre trying to work out how youre going to solve a problem, if the person youre trying to negotiate with is incapable of negotiation because theyre not, theyre not reasonable, that for me is a sort of kafkaesque scenario. Awful. And i was so angry with david until i stopped being angry. Just understood that he was in the grip of something that he could not control. And once i stopped being angry with him, our lives got a lot better, actually. But that guilt, is it still with you . I mean, you describe one particular incident, i think perhaps just days before he actually went into the hospital for the final time, where hed done something you thought was so ridiculous, so impossible to deal with, so wrong that you yelled, you lost your temper completely. Yes, i became a screaming thing, and it was almost an out of body experience. But, of course, it was frustration because i think, like anyone whos, if youre married to an addict, you know that the end is in sight. So, i was terrified about that, of course, and occasionally would. The other thing is ive tried, you have to be the one who keeps things together, and also i was the vicar. So myjob is to be unflappable, to get people through moments of crisis. And i imagine you would have seen situations like that in otherfamilies. You had been in hospital bedside situations, youd been counselling families in the most difficult situations. And yet, i guess, you also felt, this is me. Yeah. And i was powerless. And david, who was also ordained, but he was a medic before that, hed worked in a e. So these were scenarios that we both had encountered professionally, but i couldnt do anything about it. So i thought, what can i do about this . And i thought, well, i love him and im going to make sure that ijust locate, id centre myself in that. When i did that, life got a lot better. He didnt stop drinking, though, but life got a lot better. Theres so much that is very raw in this account of yours, and it is gripping to read, but its also very difficult to read in a way. Why have you done it . Well, i thought if im going to do this, im going to do this. So i thought, full, theres never full disclosure, but i thought as much disclosure as i can. I got permission from davids family. I was going to say, because, you know, youre writing about your husband, your life partner, but youre also writing about somebody� s son, somebody� s brother. Yeah. So i got their permission to do it. And partly it was because. I wanted to tell the story, actually, and partly because i thought it might be good for other people who were going through the same thing. And also, actually, writers write, its what i do. Is that ever exploitative . Oh, yeah. Yes, of course it is. This is the thing people say about the chip of ice, dont they, in the writers heart. And there are elements, i think, when youre dealing with stuff which is extremely painful for other people, and youre editing and selecting because you have a story to tell and there are rules of narrative and you want to, you want people to read it. But thats a trade off, i think. Is this a project that has integrity and honesty . Is it valuable . Well, if you think so, yes, then you do. The other thing is, you know, you bump into people in life. I learnt this with david, actually. Weve had a very, you know, you bruise. You knock bits off. Its not always sweetness and light. And that, i think, needs to be part of the telling of the story. The anger that we referred to that you felt at times within your loving relationship has other layers to it, and i want to explore those. Anger with the church, of which you were an important part. And david was, too, because he was also a vicar. Yeah. Here, the two of you living in a loving relationship and your own church would not recognise, fully recognise your relationship. Indeed, you had to promise the church, as i understand that, that you would be celibate within your live in partnership. You couldnt have a blessing of your Civil Partnership inside the church. Why did you stay in that church . Because i love the church, because. But the church, in a sense, didnt love you. Well, thats always true of institutions, isnt it . Same of the bbc. Lots of people love the bbc, doesnt love you back. You learn this, right . So you make your accommodation with it. If you think its something worth doing, and i did, and theres much about the church that i do love and lot about the people in the church that i loved. And also my day to day experience was always of being affirmed, actually. And david and i managed to find a way in which we could conduct the necessary intimacies of our relationship without subjecting that to this kind of Weird Forensic Process that the church expected. I mean, again, this is difficult territory. I dont want to sound. Im very happy talk about this. Voyeuristic or prying in any way. But i mean, could you be honest to yourself and to those promises that the church required you to make . No. And where did it, where did it break . Where . Where was the dishonesty or the failing to fully truthful . Celibate relationship. We didnt have a celibate relationship. We didnt, no. But then ive often thought, you know, ive never had, ive never had a twinge of conscience about that because i thought the question was not a legitimate question. Would you tell the gestapo the truth if you were being interrogated . No, you wouldnt. Of course you wouldnt. But this isnt the gestapo. This is the church that you are a part of, that you actually represent. But it was a question that was not legitimate. It was one that refused to acknowledge the equal dignity that david and i had and i wasnt going to, i wasnt prepared to brook that. So we did what we had to do. I just wonder whether your feelings about the church, now that youve left the full time vicar role and indeed the vicarage which you loved so much, are you freer to be open about your anger and sometimes your shame of some of the positions the Church Of England has taken when it comes to lgbt rights and equality . Not just lgbt stuff, other stuff too. Its failure to deal with its safeguarding responsibilities adequately in the past, much better now, is another one. But i think kind of coming out of it has made it easierfor me to speak more freely and also, if im honest, made me realise what its cost me and others to not be honest, actually. And if a church cant be honest, its an institution. A bishop said to me, all institutions are demonic and i kind of get what he means because they have to be upheld, and upholding an institution will inevitably run contrary to your personal integrity and honesty. So you make your accommodation with that as best you can. But coming out of it. But i do, theres so much in it thats great and so many people in it who are loving and wonderful, so i could never. Its a complicated and contradictory complex. I get that its complex but you just interestingly talked about the cost and even the cost to you. Do you think, in retrospect, it was a mistake to be sort of so obedient to the church . I couldnt have done it any other way. We did what we had to do to be viable within the system. I think bill clinton said that, didnt he, about whether he inhaled or not . Well, we did inhale. And but we wanted to remain viable in the system, so thats what we did. I want to now ask you whether you you see a coherent thread in your own life, which is a funny question, but youve done so many Different Things that, to the outside observer, it looks like a sort of almost a random life where you just threw stuff Up In The Air and see what happened but you were, for those who dont know, you were a very successful pop star in your 20s with a series of number one hits. The communards were a huge success in the 1980s. You also were a social activist in the Red Wedge Movement which was radical, it was pro gay rights, it was socialistic. You then became a sort of thoroughly english vicar in the most english of villages, but you also became a broadcaster with the bbc, amongst others, and a bit of a national celebrity. Yeah. Do all of these things have a thread . Well, i dont know. I mean, living your Life Kierkegaard says, you live your life forwards but you experience it backwards. So, at the time, it was just one thing happened after another thing. Of course, there were choices being made consciously an unconsciously. In retrospect, i do see more of a pattern. I mean, the interesting is i started off as a chorister, stephen, so the chorister contained two elements which have been consistent in my life one of them is a fascination with the Church Of England and the other one is commitment to music. So, those two things have been pretty consistent. You will know from, as being a bbc lifer, the number of Vicarage Kids who work in the bbc is wildly disproportionate. In the arts unit, i think 25 had grown up in vicarages, so go figure. I think its about something to do with wanting to commit yourself to something that aspires to be the best that we can be. Well, thats within. But what about without . Did you also aspire to change the world . Oh, yeah, yeah. I loved the idea of even when i was, when i was young, i loved the idea of people being passionately being full of passionate conviction, and this idea that you could do that, you know . You could make the world better. I mean, theres so much of that. In a way, just looking at the arc of your career, i wonder why you walked away from being a potentially very influential pop star so early because you had such great success, you were part of a movement, which was, you know, it was out and proud and gay and it was socially committed and then, you just packed it all in. Yeah. I mean, i wanted to do something different. And i think part of it was i mean, the defining event of my adult life was the aids epidemic. So, at the best of times, the worst of times, at the height of our success in the 1980s, we were absolutely hit by the arrival of hiv and that changed all our lives because half the people we knew died and died terribly, and in a way which was horribly undefended. So, i didnt really want to do pop music after that. So what we did, we concentrated our efforts, we regrouped and we started working into activism around providing care and support for people with hiv, because nobody else was doing that. And then, i think also, confrontation with mortality in me, in many others, led me to ask questions and i found that the kind of places i would go to answer those questions no longer served. And i was looking for i was convinced up to that point that the world was a Material Phenomenon and everything you would need from it, you would find in it and i began to think, no. I remembered being a kid in chapel. I was never a believer, but i liked being there. And i sensed what lots of people sense that theyre unique and distinctive places and you can take stuff there that simply doesnt fit anywhere else and thats got me back in. And the minute i reconnected with it, i realised it was actually my homeland and i needed to start living in it. The story youve just told does involve a lot of death and it sort of takes us back to the beginning of this conversation and making sense of grief and how it works. Do you think you there is a depressive side to your personality which does actually overfocus on loss and death . Yes, i think thats true. Less so now. When i was younger, i was like hamlet well, in one or two ways but i was obsessed with it, actually. And i think i think it did colour my thinking and my view of the world, but it still does actually. But im much more interested in life, actually. But you cannot be interested in life without being aware of the shape of life, and what shapes life is its beginning and its end. Youve also said, i think recently in talking about the book and what it means, that you reached a point where you were tired of fighting the activist fight to change society. Yeah. And it is interesting to me now that one of the things you are doing, and very successfully doing, is writing the most Quintessentially English crime novels, which arent particularly challenging but sort of provide a sort of comfort food for the mind for a lot of people. Well, thats interesting because i mean, i think i like to deal with that stuff but actually, im also a bit more disruptive than that, but i try to do. I love emily dickinson, one of my favourite poets. And she said, tell all the truths, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies. And im really interested in how you talk about these ideas. Talk about change, the possibilities of change in ways that are not so directly confrontational because theres no shortage of confrontation, mr hardtalk, as you know. Stephen chuckles. And actually, im not really interested in that and i do find that theres a cost to activism. And it is this thing you strap on armour every day, you go out into the world and you fight what you hope is a good fight, but it costs you again. And sometimes you want to take the armour off and explore your own vulnerability and also explore the unignorable ambiguities of your own position on things, like lots of people. Im 60 now and i think a lot about how the certainties that i would enjoy in my 20s and 30s, i dont have them any more. Im more pragmatic. And the recent death of the of the queen, of course, has been for me and for lots of people, i think a really decisive moment because its made me realise with more clarity where i am now, its not the same place. Youre very good at Self Deprecation and you, in the book, make a point of how david used to mock you by when you were angry with each other, he was, ah, britains best loved vicar as a joke. But you are britains best loved vicar. And as such, i just want you, given everything youve done in different aspects of british culture, to tell me whether you are more comfortable with where britain is culturally now than you were when you were in your radical 20s. Do you think britain is a better place culturally . Oh, well, yes and no, i suppose its the answer to that in some ways, immeasurably so. You know, when i was first an activist for lgbt rights, as were called now we didnt call them that then in 1980, if you look at the index on social attitudes, youll see i think it was 80 of people in 1980 in britain thought gay relationships were always wrong. By 1990, that had shrunk to 20 . Huge change. And to be part of that was great. And i look around now and i talk to i had someone who came to Supper Last Night whos in his 20s and ijust thought he had this opportunity to live a life that was unavailable to my generation, and thats good. But then, i also look at a country and a culture which is divided, full of centrifugal forces that lapses into kind of easy, lazy anger, if you can have a lazy anger, and everyone shouting at each other on twitter. And ifind im very worried about that. And lets end on a personal note. Where is yourfaith now . We talked a lot about the church as an institution. Yeah. Where is your faith . Faith is good, actually. Faith is good and burning strong and always has ive never had the dark night of the soul that youre meant to have. I dont know why, but i never have done. I mean, my faith in the church waxes and wanes. My faith in myself waxes and wanes. But faith in god has only has been a constant, actually. And are you a very different person now from the Richard Coles before you experienced this terrible madness of grief and loss . Yes, i think i am. It does change you of course it does. And i hope im more tolerant. I hope im slower to be judgemental and more compassionate. Its a great place to end because we have to end, but Richard Coles, its been a real pleasure having you on hardtalk. Thank you. Thank you, stephen. Thank you very much, richard. Hello there. According to data released by the met office on monday, across england and wales in september, we saw a first month of above average rainfall since february. This is the average line notice how significantly low it was at times during the summer. Problem is, to sort the drought issues out, we need more of what we had in september. And whilst well see some rain certainly across northern and Western Areas over the next few days, the south and east, not what we need largely dry for one or two. Heaviest of the rain is across those Western Areas, and by the end of wednesday we could see 30 80 millimetres of rain. By the end of the week, some parts of Western Scotland maybe as much as 200 millimetres. And thats because a supercharged jet stream will push in Weather Fronts like they do on tuesday, and thatll drop a lot of rainfall across those Western Areas. And starting tuesday, wet across parts of Western Scotland, Northern Ireland, but very mild here, 111 15 celsius. Fresher to the south and east, but not as cool as it was on monday morning. Some southern and eastern areas will stay dry throughout the day, particularly east anglia, the southeast, and the channel islands. Brightening up through scotland and parts of Northern Ireland as we go through tuesday. But southern scotland, maybe Northern Ireland, and certainly to northern england, well see outbreaks of rain develop same too across north and west of wales, some of which will be on the heavy side. Top and tail the country drier, but for all with winds quite blustery in the morning, easing a bit into the afternoon coming in from the south, south west, it will be a mild one. And a mild night will follow the wind strengthening, Touching Gale Force later across the west with more in the way of heavy and persistent rain developing. Scotland, northwest england, wales again, probably likely to see that, but notice what a warm start it will be to wednesday morning, a warm and windy one gales in places. And this is a developing area of low pressure. Now, if the Development Takes place after it leaves the uk, thats where well see the strongest of the winds out into the north sea. But if it happens earlier, bear in mind winds, could be stronger. The cloud and more persistent rain for many will be during the morning, lingering longest into the afternoon, east anglia and the southeast. But most places on wednesday will brighten up to sunshine and blustery showers, some of those heavy and thundery. These are the average wind speeds we could see Gale Force Winds quite widely, particularly for parts of england and wales, even 50 60 mph gusts possible in the west. Well keep you updated all depends on how that low pressure develops. Turning fresh into the north and west later on in the day after a very mild start, and that leaves us with a fresher end to the week, thursday and friday. Very blustery, though, with frequent showers in the north and the west. Bye for now. This is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. Im and around the world. Sally bundock. Tokyo condemns north korea for firing another Ballistic Missile this time overjapan. Authorities warned people to evacuate buildings and take shelter. North koreas actions regarding repeated listing Missile Launchers are a threat to the peace and security of our country, region, and international community. The uk chancellor brings forward the release of his plan to cut the nations debt after being forced into a u turn on a key budget policy. The uk government prepares to set out tough new rules to stop thousands of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats. We have a Special Report from northern france
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