THIS is a riveting read: self-revelatory, candid about others, and packed with outrageous stories. One concerns a bishop, whom Chris Bryant did not know and who invited him to dinner shortly after his election as an MP and suggested that he might have a word with Tony Blair about his candidacy for Canterbury. The bishop is not named. This autobiography is also the story of a man who survived an appalling childhood to lead a varied and worthwhile life as priest and then politician.
Bryant’s mother was an alcoholic, and he, as a teenager, was her primary carer, his father having left. So, at the age of 16, it is he who has to divide up the furniture between them when they divorce. So, how did he survive? At his boarding school, there were masters who believed in him and encouraged him, one in particular. And there were two aunts living in Scotland to whom he went for periods of stability. What this brings out is the crucial importance of non-family members when a family is dysfunctional. The other factor must be good genes; for he was obviously born with a cheerful resilience that has enabled him not just to survive, but to flourish after every setback, including his recent melanoma.
A talented actor, Bryant worked for three sessions with the National Youth Theatre, but was led to offer himself for ordination, mainly, I think, because the people who believed in him were Christians. He served a first curacy and then as a youth officer. But an increasing awareness of his gayness and his frustration at the Church’s attitude left a desire for more freedom, and he sought secular employment. This included being European spokesman for the BBC.
Future historians will find what he writes about the painful business of being gay in the period when it was still illegal up to the age of 21, and then discovering a new freedom when the legal climate changed, particularly illuminating. Like others, he wanted at first to do what everybody else did and even became engaged. It was a girl friend to whom he was particularly close who convinced him that he was gay. For those of an older generation brought up on ideals of chastity and sexual self-restraint, what he writes about the gay scene may come as something of a shock, and what he writes of the Church as dismaying. But it is all told with self-deprecating humour.
It was a natural hatred of injustice and a period in South America studying liberation theology which changed his politics from an earlier Conservatism. After a period as an election agent and councillor in Hackney, whose politics he found vicious, he stood first for a seat at High Wycombe, where he increased the Labour vote. He then won the Labour nomination for Rhondda, whose MP he still remains. His description of how he did this against all the odds, telephoning and visiting all the members, shows him as a man who can be deeply serious and practical about achieving particular goals. The book ends there, and no doubt his parliamentary career, which includes a number of senior posts, including being a Minister in the present Government, will be the subject of another volume.
Bryant says that he never lost his faith, but that it had always focused on Jesus the teacher and enemy of injustice. “The metaphysical stuff, by contrast, leaves me cold.” But, for years, he said daily morning and evening prayer, celebrated the eucharist, and ministered to the sick and dying. I believe that it meant more to him than that, as it did to those Christians who believed in him, prayed for him, loved him, and helped him to survive his childhood and flourish.
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is a former Bishop of Oxford, and an Hon. Professor of Theology at King’s College, London. His autobiography is The Shaping of a Soul: a life taken by surprise (John Hunt Publishing, 2023).
A Life and a Half: The unexpected making of a politician
Chris Bryant
Bloomsbury £25
(978-1-5266-8091-4)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50
Read an interview with Sir Chris Bryant here
