There’s still time to listen to Shirley Williams on this week’s edition of Belief on BBC Radio 3:
The new Easter series of Belief opens with a conversation between two baronesses: Joan Bakewell and Shirley Williams.
Shirley Williams was born in 1930. Her father, the philosopher and political scientist George Catlin, was a great influence. He bought young Shirley a copy of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets when she was two years old. He also introduced her to the Roman Catholic Church. She has also been greatly influenced by the moral and political convictions of her mother the feminist and pacifist writer, Vera Brittain.
In this programme Shirley Williams talks about the convictions that have motivated her life in politics – and particularly about the inspiration she has taken from the example of Jesus, the Second Vatican Council and the establishment of the Welfare State – a political event she remembers first-hand.
Listen to the interview (available on iPlayer till Monday).
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One Comment
Shirley Williams (born in 1930) was indeed very fortunate to be given a copy of T S Eliot’s Four Quartets when she was two years old – particularly as the work was not completed until 1942.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(A “Kek’s Spell” as Richard Wainwright’s son, Martin, described them when he said: “Frank McEachran stood us on chairs at school reciting poetry we’d learned by heart. Probably child abuse these days, but he called it Spells and I can still remember them all.”)