More Details on 'Great Lives' BBC Radio 4 Monday, 4.30 pm

There are now more details available about the BBC
Radio 4 programme ‘Great Lives’, in which I nominate George Bell, sometime
Bishop of Chichester. The programme, presented by Matthew Parris, is to be
broadcast on Tuesday 2nd April at 4.30 pm and again on
Friday 5th April at 11.00 p.m. I believe it
will also be more or less permanently available to download on the BBC player.

 

Bishop Bell was one of the few prominent people who
opposed the deliberate bombing of German civilians during World War Two, at the
time it was taking place, and so remains controversial to this day. As I know
very well from my correspondence, many people continue to defend this action(
some on the bizarre grounds that the German bombing of Britain was so terrible
and barbaric, which is surely an argument against anyone using this appalling method of warfare).

 

None of these defences actually stand up. Britain was
not under any serious threat of invasion, nor did bombing German civilians
lessen this danger in any way.  The huge resources devoted to the bombing
campaign could have been used to fight the genuinely dangerous German U-boat
offensive far more effectively; they could also have been used in developing,
much earlier than eventually happened, the long-range fighter escorts which
made accurate bombing of German strategic targets possible.  The diversion
of German resources away from the Russian front could have been achieved by
attacking military and industrial targets, which would also have shortened the
war , as attacking civilians in their homes did not do.

 

But they are advanced because many people are, even
now, unwilling to concede that we did anything wrong. George Bell, not a
pacifist (he lost two brothers in the First World War)but a Christian, did now,
and said so when it mattered  at some cost to himself.

 

He had many other merits, some of which emerge in the
programme, and some of which don’t (his role as midwife to T.S.Eliot’s great
play ’Murder in the Cathedral’ is one example of his adventurous and
enlightened ideas about how the church should open itself to the people and
ally itself with the arts to spread its message). I think it was a pity he
didn’t become Archbishop of Canterbury, and I’m pretty certain, from studying
his biography in detail, that he was denied this post because of his stand.
Anyway, listen to the programme. You can find out more about it by going here.

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rl8n8

 

Among other things, this will eventually lead you to a
rather amusing photograph of me, Matthew Parris and Andrew Chandler, an expert
on George Bell who also plays a major part in the programme.