Glittering Images
The author’s most famous and well-loved work, the Starbridge series, six self-contained yet interconnected novels that explore the history of the Church of England through the 20th century.Beneath the smooth surface of an Episcopal palace lurks the salacious breath of scandal. Charles Ashworth is sent to untangle the web of self-delusion and corruption only to become embroiled in a strange ménage à trois that threatens to expose the secrets of his own past…In Glittering Images tension and drama combine in a compelling novel of people in high places, of desperate longings and the failure to resist them, of lies and evasions, of tarnished realities behind brilliant glittering images.
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Susan Howatch
GLITTERING IMAGES
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1987
Copyright © Leaftree Ltd 1987
Extracts from The Bishoprick Papers, Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson, More Letters of Herbert Hensley Henson and Spiritual Counsels and Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hugel Printed by kind permission of SPCK.
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006496892
Ebook edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780007396399 Version: 2018-10-08
From the reviews:
‘Susan Howatch may well be the Anthony Trollope of the 20th century. Howatch is more than just a novelist of ideas … She is a skilled storyteller who makes the reader wonder, and care about her people’
Andrew Greeley, Washington Post
‘Rich in human interest, sex, scandal, moral crises and a good deal of humour, it is a book to keep you hooked throughout’
Sunday Times
‘Howatch writes thrillers of the heart and mind … everything in a Howatch novel cuts close to the bone and is of vital concern’
New Woman
‘Susan Howatch … is writing for anyone who can recognise that mysterious gift of the true storyteller’
Daily Telegraph
‘One of the most original novelists writing today’
Cosmopolitan
‘The deeper we get into reality, the more numerous will be the questions we cannot answer.’
Spiritual Counsels and Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel ed. DOUGLAS V. STEERE
‘A bishop, I remind myself, is not quite as other men.’
HERBERT HENSLEY HENSON
Bishop of Durham 1920–1939 The Bishoprick Papers
I
My ordeal began one summer afternoon when I received a telephone call from the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was a hot day, and beyond the window the quadrangle of Laud’s shimmered in the hazy light. Term had ended; the resulting peace provided an atmosphere conducive to work, and when the telephone rang it was with reluctance that I reached for the receiver.
A voice announced itself as Lambeth Palace and proclaimed that His Grace wished to speak to Dr Ashworth on a matter of extreme urgency. Apparently the Archbishop was still infecting his chaplains with his love of melodrama.
‘My dear Charles!’ Dr Lang’s voice, always sonorous, now achieved a pitch of theatrical splendour. He was a member of that generation which regards the telephone as at worst a demonic intruder and at best a thespian challenge, and when I inquired diplomatically about his health I was treated to a dramatic discourse on the more tedious aspects of senectitude. The Archbishop, on that first day of July in 1937, was in his seventy-third year and as fit as an ecclesiastical grandee has a right to expect, but in common with all men he hated the manifestations of old age.
‘… however enough of my tiresome little ailments,’ he concluded as I added the finishing touches to the mitre I had sketched on my memo-pad. ‘Charles, I’m preaching at Ely next Sunday, and because I’m most anxious that we should meet I’ve arranged to spend the night in Cambridge at the house of my old friend the Master of Laud’s. I shall come to your rooms after Evensong, but let me stress that I wish my visit to be entirely private. I have a commission which I wish to entrust to you, and the commission,’ said the Archbishop, milking the situation of every ounce of drama by allowing his voice to sink to a whisper, ‘is very delicate indeed.’
I wondered if he imagined he could arrive at my rooms without being recognized. Archbishops hardly find it easy to travel incognito, and an archbishop who had recently played a leading part in the abdication of one king and the coronation of another was hardly the most anonymous of clerics.
