HarperCollins £25 pp384

In the 11 years of George Carey’s leadership, the Church of England lost more than a quarter of its worshippers, a catastrophic decline in attendance — the sharpest in the church’s history — that gets no mention here. Perhaps the truth is too embarrassing. Carey also fails to acknowledge some uncomfortable facts about himself. He seems unaware that his brother bishops believed he was ill-equipped to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Senior churchmen spent the 1990s cracking cruel jokes about him. “I like George, but he’d be out of his depth in a font” was one of the milder examples.

Carey has a chance to answer his critics in this memoir. But instead of insights into life at the centre, we hear the voice of an observer who is never in control of events and can scarcely believe his luck at his surprise promotion. In banal, dear-diary form, with no hint of agonising over or grappling with such a commission, he recounts how he learned that he was to go to Canterbury: “In a daze I drove to the pub where Eileen (his wife) was waiting.” (You picture him carrying a tray of beer to her in a pub garden saying: “You’ll never guess! I’ve got Canterbury!”). He describes the scene thus: “It was a lovely day . . . we sat outside hardly appreciating the food before us.”

He does, however, bring painful honesty to bear on his childhood memories, one of the endearing elements of the book. He admits telling a lie about his age to get into the Sea Cadets, and he reveals that his father makes reparation for a theft committed long before. In a memoir without much humour, his description of taking Eileen (then his girlfriend) to his college room and finding it plastered with photographs of the other students’ girlfriends is genuinely funny.

There is also the revelation that he once had the spark of a rebel in him. Long before he was ordained a priest, he celebrated Holy Communion while on national service in southern Iraq — “quite illegally of course”.

Carey’s serious account of the theological debate over women priests might even appeal to the general reader. And there are some amusing political anecdotes. He was once lectured for an “inordinate length” of time by Margaret Thatcher. Carey whets our appetite but then the story falls flat. Time and again he seems to miss his own private cue.For the book often descends into school-essay style. “I was up very early . . . somehow I knew it was going to be a good day,” is how he introduces the General Synod debate on women priests. The words “Easter in any church or cathedral is always a big event, and Canterbury Cathedral is no exception” precede his famous confrontation with Peter Tatchell over gay rights.

The most depressing chapter (titled, without irony, The Glory of the Crown) concerns the royal family, and reveals a man mesmerised by titles and position. Already one senior courtier has dismissed his claim to have been parish priest to the royals as “absurd and laughable”. Apart from some bizarre encounters with Princess Margaret, Carey cannot support his claim with evidence .

Princess Diana sought the counsel of priests who she thought were genuinely holy men. The Queen’s own priestly confidant is one of her domestic chaplains. The Prince of Wales was so irritated with Carey that he had to be dragged to Canterbury for the opening of the Lambeth conference in 1998. And the Queen’s private staff lost patience with Carey and his hapless team at Lambeth Palace when he tried in vain to secure a better slot in the celebrations at the Millennium Dome on New Year’s Eve,1999.

And yet Carey plods on, trying but failing to convince us that “they” had accepted him. The ill-judged meetings with Camilla Parker Bowles show him at his worst. He sums up his misreading of the situation in one sentence: “We came to appreciate the deep and affectionate relationship that existed between Prince Charles and herself; she was a dependable person and was probably more aware of the importance of Charles ’s role in the nation than Diana ever was.” Earlier in the book, he chided his predecessor, Robert Runcie, for being “wobbly and indecisive on doctrinal and ethical issues”: now he lavishes praise on the woman many hold responsible for breaking up the Waleses’ marriage.

A memoir of a spiritual leader is expected to contain some interesting religious writing. But there is little imaginative spirituality here. Instead it charts the dull career path of a church bureaucrat. One senior bishop said after Carey became Archbishop of Canterbury: “That Appointment Commission did the cruellest thing to him.” Carey’s own memoir confirms that judgment.

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