“Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love” by James Runcie

The Masterpiece Theater Facebook page had a rather spirited (and occasionally mean-spirited) discussion about the “Grantchester” television series. Season 3 has taken a sharp turn toward the characters’ personal problems and angst – the police Inspector Geordie Keating has an affair with a secretary at the police station and the reverend Sidney Chambers is having growing difficulties reconciling his church position with his love for Amanda Richmond; Amanda is divorced and in the 1950s Church of England clergy could not marry divorcees and remain clergy.

The Facebook discussion quickly became a cultural debate, and how many British television shows with historical themes and narratives tend to impose the cultural values of the 2010s. We’ve seen it with “Grantchester” and with “Call the Midwife.” What happens is that the story line becomes almost promotional for contemporary cultural views, and we quickly get into politics and the culture wars.

My own observation in the discussion was that the Sidney Chambers books by author, filmmaker, and playwright James Runcie are nothing like what the television series has become. They move forward in time, they do a much better job of sticking to the cultural, social, and religious values of the period, and they are far more about Sidney Chambers and his spiritual reflections and growth, including his wrestling with doubt. In the books, Sidney does not have a love affair with Amanda, and Geordie is not unfaithful to his wife. For myself, the television series has become far less compelling than the books.

The sixth book has recently been published, and it continues in the same vein and narrative as its predecessors. Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love is comprised of six separate but connected stories, covering the first half of the 1970s. Sidney is the canon at Ely Cathedral (although Geordie remains a detective inspector in Grantchester) and he’s still finding himself pulled into mysteries.

In “The Bluebell Wood,” Sidney and his daughter Anna are walking in the woods, collecting flowers for Anna’s science project, when they find a body of a man among the bluebells. The death might be natural causes, or it might not. In “Authenticity,” Sidney almost forgets his tenth wedding anniversary. He has lunch with his friend Amanda (long divorced) and learns she may have discovered an unknown Goya, which is being put up for auction at an estate sales. But Amanda’s interest in the painting is skirting the boundaries of legality.

James Runcie

In “Insufficient Evidence,” Sidney’s and Geordie’s reporter friend Helena Mitchell, now married to the vicar at Grantchester (Sidney’s former position) is charging her photographer with rape. And it’s going to become an ugly trial. A valuable old book is stolen from a Cambridge college library in “Ex Libris,” and Sidney had to figure out not only who stole it but how it was stolen.

Sidney experiences a family crisis is “The Long Hot Summer,” when his nephew disappears. And in the final (and title) story of the collection, “The Persistence of Love,” Sidney faces an unexpected personal crisis – and it is a crisis that’s unexpected for the reader as well.

Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love is up to the mark of the previous books in the series. Runcie is able to evoke the spirit of the period by citing various current news events and often blending them into the stories. He’s demonstrating that a story set in recent history can be interesting and engaging without imposing contemporary cultural values on it.

Related:

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation.

Top photograph: The nave of Ely Cathedral, where Sidney Chambers serves as canon.

“Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation”

It’s the late 1960s. The Nigerian civil war is unfolding into the starvation of Biafra. The Beatles continue to reign supreme in popular music. The United States is gearing up for Apollo 13 and the first walk by human beings on the moon.

And Ely Cathedral Archdeacon Sidney Chambers continues to insert himself – or fall into – one mystery after another. The man seems to simultaneously attract crime puzzles or insert himself into them, and sometimes both.

Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation, the new installment of the Grantchester mysteries, was published last month by British author and film producer James Runcie. (Inspiration for these Church of England mysteries likely came from having Robert Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury who died in 2000, for a father.) The new series of six stories continues to move Sidney along in time – he’s in his mid-40s and continuing as Archdeacon at Ely, some 20 miles from Cambridge and Grantchester. But he’s still working with Inspector Geordie Keating of the Cambridge Police, still helping his friends, and still wrestling with personal and theological issues.

In the title story, “The Dangers of Temptation,” Sidney is asked to help rescue a young man from a local commune that has elements of a cult. And then the head of the commune is murdered – by beheading. In “Grantchester Meadows,” a May partying rite at Cambridge University (held with English inexplicability in June) results in a student being almost trampled by a heard of cows and a valuable necklace being stolen.

In “The Trouble with Amanda,” Sidney’s one-time love interest and still good friend Amanda Richmond is having marital problems with her husband Henry, who’s having problems of his own with his former wife Connie, whose body is found bound and gagged in a pond. “The Return” focuses on the husband of Mrs. Maguire, Sidney’s former housekeeper in Grantchester, who turns up after being gone for 25 years.

James Runcie

In “A German Summer,” Sidney and his family vacation at a resort in the German Democratic Republic (this is long before the fall the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany), and the resort owner dies in a motorcycle accident, which Sidney suspects is not an accident at all. And in the sixth story, “Love and Duty,” Sidney’s former curate Leonard Graham, now a vicar at St. Alban’s, is being blackmailed.

The stories of Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation are like their predecessors, in that they are often interrelated and form a long-running narrative of faith, family, friendship, and reconciling all of those with the way of the world. Sidney has to navigate some tricky situations, and like the rest of us, isn’t always consistent. But the stories are good ones, for both entertainment and reflection.

Related:

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins.

Top photograph: Banks of the River Cam near Grantchester, via Wikipedia.

“Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins”

I just finished watching the second season of the Grantchester Mysteries on PBS, based on the books by James Runcie. I’ve enjoyed the series, but the television program has diverged markedly from the books.

I like the books better, for two reasons. The television program adds plot lines that don’t exist in the books (Amanda Kendall, Sidney Chambers’ original love interest, doesn’t get married until the fourth book in Runcie’s series, for example. There are other significant differences, too.) And second, the books allow for Sidney’s ruminations on spiritual concerns, which the television program includes in truncated form at best.

In the fourth collection, Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins, Sidney finds himself promoted. Instead of being the vicar at Grantchester, a close suburb of Cambridge, Sidney becomes the archdeacon at Ely Cathedral, 20 miles from Cambridge but still close enough to get involved in several of his friend Inspector Geordie Keating’s cases. The time period is roughly 1964.

In the title story, “The Forgiveness of Sins,” a musician claims sanctuary in Sidney’s church in Grantchester, saying he has found his wife stabbed to death in their hotel bed. When the police investigate, they find no body and no signs of foul play. In “Nothing to Worry About,” Sidney and his wife are invited to a weekend party at a country manor, and the owner and his guests are about as intriguing a crew as you’re likely to find in any Agatha Christie mystery.

In “Fugue,” Sidney is watching a Steinway grand piano being lifted up to a second-story window when there’s a slip and the piano crashes to the ground, killing the man who had bought it. An accident – or not? In “A Following,” Sidney’s dean at Ely Cathedral asks him to keep an eye their canon, who seems to have too much of a roving eye when it comes to females.

James Runcie

“Prize Day” finds Sidney investigating a rigged explosion in a chemistry lab at a local school, and uncovering far more than a schoolboy’s prank. And in “Florence,” Sidney finds himself taken into police custody in the Italian city for suspected theft of a valuable painting.

And all through these stories, Sidney, and author Runcie, meditates on forgiveness – what it means, how difficult it can be, and what can happen when it’s not forthcoming.

Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins is the last of the currently published Grantchester mysteries, and it is just as good as its predecessors. And a new one is coning in June: Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation.

Related:

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night.

My review of Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil.

Photograph: Ely Cathedral.