The Archbishop of Canterbury had a choice to make before writing the sermon he delivered at yesterday’s service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s. He could fill it with earnest praise for the Queen that might not easily have been distinguished from similar paeans offered by so many others over the past four days. Or he could risk criticism and say something pointed and memorable. He took the risky option.
Praise for the Queen did form his beginning and his end, but his middle was directed at the rest of us. Only true altruism, he said, can save us from “the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and the marginal”. For anyone who might have nodded off, he added later: “We live less than human lives if we think just of our own individual good.”
Dr Williams was speaking from a pulpit, but also from the heart of London’s financial district, and from his own heart. He is at his best when blunt. As ever he had thought hard about his choice of words and linked them firmly to his primary source, in this case the New Testament writings of St Paul. He rose to the occasion. Would that the same could be said of the BBC’s performance on Sunday. A decision was taken — at what level will no doubt become clear — to treat the Thames pageant as entertainment rather than history in the making. It was the wrong decision. From it flowed ill-timed cutaways to irrelevant celebrity interviews, a plethora of factual errors and an atmosphere of blithe insouciance when research, gravitas and just a little awe were what was needed. It will be more than 60 years before the BBC’s next chance to get it right.