Each Monday for the last 6 weeks I have stayed in to watch ITV's drama series Grantchester. I have 2 very personal reasons why I have this devotion to a programme that is not quite the Cambridge equivalent of Inspector Morse that I expected. Firstly it was commissioned by a great friend of mine Tory Fea. Tory currently holds the number 3 position in ITV drama held back only by her desire for a young family in recent years. Tory is one of those very few people who is brilliant at everything but is actually really nice. Few people get to the top by being nice. She did.
The other reason is Grantchester played a huge part in my childhood. Many Wednesday afternoons and Sunday mornings were spent in that beautiful village with its ancient church and war memorial that includes the war poet Rupert Brooke as a man of the village. Noel Brewster who was vicar at the church during the 1970s and 1980s was a great friend. Often he took us for days out, I went to the church and generally treated us kindly when others perhaps did not. There spirituality meant something to me. Not elsewhere.
During my illness I rather neglected my friendship after Noel had retired. He wrote to me but I was too ashamed of my madness to write back. He died in the late 1990s-I don't recall the year-and I attended his funeral. His memorial reads simply Noel Brewster Priest.
What Noel would have made of the crime busting vicar in the drama I'm not sure. People of his generation might not be comfortably with the searing sexuality, angst, and flaws of the character. It's intense stuff. The 1950s seem a strange world to us today. But human emotion has been human emotion throughout history.
I look forward to series 2. For now I recall the marvellous images of that place that is sacred to me conjured up for me in Tory's drama. Mixed days but great in many respects.
I Heard a Voice.
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