Opinion with Michael Coren The children’s author Roald Dahl said, “An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.” Odd, really, in that my autobiography was published this week and one of the “details” is all about Mr. Dahl. I interviewed him back in 1983 and he spewed out the most hideous antisemitism. That exchange is part of a major play currently running in London, England and starring John Lithgow. My memoir ends five years ago when I was ordained as an Anglican priest, so what it feels like to be portrayed on stage will have to wait for volume two. Dahl was as horribly wrong about autobiographies as he was about religious tolerance and basic decency. Memoirs can, of course, be dull and dry, but I’ve tried to be candid and honest, especially about my failings. And, as they say, I’ve had a few. I’m simply too old to worry about what people think. It’s not an easy task to sit at a desk and recall the past, with all of its open wounds, selfish whims, poor behaviour and sheer foolishness. There have been triumphs too, acts of generosity and kindness and, I hope – especially over the last 10 years – a determined and sincere effort to be a witness to a greater good. But unless we’re enormously smug, it’s what we got wrong that becomes so vivid when we consciously recollect. I’d start the day early, and I’d find myself asking again and again why I didn’t do better in so many instances. Perhaps it was a cleansing exercise, perhaps it was all for the good, but I can’t pretend that it was fun. Then there were the people whom I worked with who are no longer alive, which is a very sobering thought indeed. Screenwriter Colin Welland (who won an Oscar for Chariots of Fire) was a mentor to me, and I was his researcher for several years. John Pilger, with whom I wrote my first book and who was one of the most influential journalists of his era. Jessica Mitford, Martha Gellhorn, Martin Amis, Christopher Hitchens. Some of them lived long lives, but not all. Incalculable talent taken far too soon. I wrote of my childhood, my parents, my utter failure to understand my father until I became one myself. My struggle with identity. A working-class boy suddenly operating in a radically different world and with people my dad the taxi driver would only have seen on television or when they got into the back of his cab. My religious identity. Three Jewish grandparents but not considered fully Jewish, who became a Roman Catholic in 1984, an Anglican a decade ago, and who is now a priest. That faith journey forms a central theme of the book. I don’t regard this as an especially religious book, however, so don’t be too alarmed! I came to Canada in 1987 after meeting a wonderful young woman at an academic conference in Toronto the year before. She’d enjoyed my lecture, told me – I think she was nervous – that I was “amazing” and, thinking that this would never happen again, I married her. I was right, it hasn’t happened again. I was also right in marrying her and, 37 years later, I thank God for that chance meeting. Then came television and radio shows, controversy, columns, books, lectures and speeches, allying myself with the conservative right and causing harm and pain that I’ve spent the last decade working to put right. Some of what has been said about me is propaganda, but enough is true. It’s not enough to say sorry. There must be contrition, penance and genuine effort to embrace and repair any damage done. Remorseful words are simply too easy. A few years ago, I asked the author and actor Stephen Fry whether I should write the book, knowing what a challenge it would be. Perhaps the wisest person I know, he said that if I didn’t do so, I’d spend the rest of my life wondering why, and before long it would be too late. I think that he was right. As soon as I finished writing it, there were things that I wish I’d said or not said but, in the end, the constant editing, worrying and self-analysis has to stop. It is what it is, I am what I am, and that will have to do, whether you like it or not. Heaping Coals: From Media Firebrand to Anglican Priest is published by Dundurn Press. CSANews | WINTER 2024 | 13
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