Robert Beaken is parish priest of St Mary the Virgin, Great Bardfield and St Katharine, Little Bardfield in Essex. He holds a PhD from Kingās College London.
āA Bishop of Decisionā, āSpyā cartoon of Lang from Vanity Fair, 19 April 1906
Cosmo Lang
Archbishop in War and Crisis
Robert Beaken
Foreword by Rowan Williams
Published in 2012 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
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Copyright Ā© 2012 Robert Beaken
The right of Robert Beaken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 78076 355 2
eISBN: 978 0 85773 128 9
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword by Rowan Williams
Acknowledgements
Note on Conventions
1. Introduction
2. From Fyvie to Lambeth: The Making of an Archbishop
3. The Archbishopric of Canterbury Between the Wars
4. Lang and the Monarchy
5. Lang and the Abdication Crisis
6. Lang and the Revised Prayer Book, 1928ā1942
7. The Second World War
8. Langās Last Days
Appendix 1: āCosmo Gordon Langeā: Spoof Whoās Who Entry
Appendix 2: āPast and Presentā: Langās Abdication Broadcast, 10 December 1936
Glossary
Short Biographies
Notes
Bibliography and Broadcast Sources
Illustrations
Frontispiece: āA Bishop of Decisionā (āSpyā cartoon of Cosmo Gordon Lang from Vanity Fair, 19 April 1906)
1. The arms of Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury 1928ā42 (Drawn by David Hopkinson)
2. The Rev. Dr John Marshall Lang, father of Cosmo Gordon Lang (Alexander Taylor)
3. The Manse, Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, where Lang was born in 1864 (Alexander Taylor)
4. 5 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow, where Lang grew up (Sharon Hamilton)
5. Tav-an-Taggart, at Tay-in-Loan, Argyll, the house built for Lang by John Morton Macdonald (The author)
6. The exterior of Ballure, Tay-in-Loan (The author)
7. The āCellā, Langās oratory at Ballure (The author)
8. Norah Dawnay, to whom Lang twice unsuccessfully proposed marriage, with her father Hugh Dawnay, eighth Viscount Downe (Viscountess Downe)
9. Ann Todd, the actress with whom Lang said he fell in love in 1933
10. Lang with King George V and Queen Mary during the royal tour of the north of England, 1912 (Lambeth Palace Library)
11. Lang in procession at the creation of the Province of Wales, 1920 (John Green-Wilkinson)
12. Lang presiding at the conclusion of the thirteen-hundredth anniversary of York Minster
13. The bishops discussing the Revised Prayer Book at Lambeth Palace
14. Watercolour of Lang by Angus Malcolm, shortly after his appointment to Canterbury, 1928 (David Malcolm)
15. Lang in January 1931 at Lovell Hill, Windsor Forest, recuperating from illness with Lumley Green-Wilkinson, his āComptrollerā (John Green-Wilkinson)
16. A fairly typical photograph of Lang when Archbishop of Canterbury (The author)
17. Langās confidential letter to Stanley Baldwin about the abdication of King Edward VIII, 25 November 1936 (Cambridge University Library)
18. Lang with his chaplains at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, 12 May 1937 (John Green-Wilkinson)
19. Wartime pastoral care: a letter from Lang to Mrs Marjorie Holland, whose husband was a prisoner-of-war of the Germans, 3 July 1940 (Celia Root)
20. The Library of Lambeth Palace showing bomb damage during the Blitz, 1940 (Lambeth Palace Library)
21. Lang photographed after preaching for the troops at Addington Church, 1942 (The Right Rev. John Cavell)
22. The burial place of Langās ashes, Canterbury Cathedral (The author)
Foreword
History and biography have not dealt kindly with Archbishop Lang. His predecessor was regarded with affection as a shrewd, serene, patriarchal figure; his successor was a charismatic national leader, a major public intellectual and a theological and devotional writer of unusual quality. Langās public utterances could be badly judged, and he was mercilessly abused by sections of the media. His own complex personality both fascinated and alienated contemporaries, and his first biographer (who had not known him personally) concentrated on this in ways that were none too helpful. Most people who remember his name at all remember the unfortunate broadcast at the time of Edward VIIIās abdication ā or perhaps the anecdote about Orpenās portrait of him (āproud, pompous and prelaticalā).
Robert Beaken has undertaken an immense labour of research in the copious primary materials now available, and has produced a completely fresh picture of Lang. For the first time, we are given a glimpse of his warm friendships with women as well as men; we learn to see him as an insightful and sympathetic counsellor to the English Establishment, not just a moralising observer; and we meet a man who had a far more creative approach to both the social and the religious challenges of his era than we should ever have guessed from earlier treatments. This is a three-dimensional figure; certainly a man of his age and class, with the limitations that implies, but also a thoughtful and courageous leader of his Church. Much in regard of the health and vigour of the Church of England that might have been ascribed to other influences turns out to have owed a great deal to his oversight. Lang helped the Church rise to the challenge of the Second World War, but he was already thinking forward to the tests of a post-war world.
Dr Beaken organises his material with clarity and vividness. This is a study that will open up some very important new perspectives on the twentieth-century Church of England, and should appeal to a much wider readership as well. Lang stood near the centres of political power at a time of unprecedented change and intense crisis. His contribution to state as well as Church was substantial. This excellent book spells out what he gave to both Church and state and helps us towards a far more rounded appreciation of an unusual, gifted, sometimes tortured, always dedicated Christian pastor.
+Rowan Cantuar:
Lambeth Palace
London SE1
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for graciously giving me permission to reproduce material from the Royal Archives. I am also grateful to The Queen for allowing me access in 2004 to the then-restricted royal correspondence in the Baldwin Papers.
I am especially grateful to Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who received me in audience and took a great interest in my work on...