5 mins
Chaplain to a King
FIVE years ago, a letter in unfamiliar handwriting with a Norfolk postmark unexpectedly dropped onto my doormat.
It turned out to be from someone called Robin Don: I immediately recognised the surname, because I had come across Alan Don whilst researching my book on Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury 1929-1942. Robin Don turned out to be Alan Don’s nephew, as well as his godson and, later, executor. He invited me to pay him a visit him to see some mementos of Archbishop Lang which his uncle had passed on to him. From this first visit emerged the idea of publishing Alan Don’s diaries.
Sadly, Robin died in 2018 whilst this work was still in progress.
Like Cosmo Lang, Alan Don (1885-1966) was a Scotsman who had been ordained into the Church of England. In 1921 he became Provost of the Scottish Episcopalian cathedral in Dundee. Ten years later, by a fluke, he became chaplain to Archbishop Lang at Lambeth Palace. It was the start of a glittering career which saw Don become chaplain to George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II, chaplain to two Speakers of the House of Commons, Rector of St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, Canon, Sub-Dean and finally Dean of Westminster. Don was married to Muriel: their marriage was childless and unhappy, and after the Second World War they led separate lives.
Don started to keep a diary in 1931 as he headed south to take up his new appointment, and continued it until 1946. His diaries are now housed in Lambeth Palace Library.
Because Don straddled so many worlds - ecclesiastical, royal, political, and social - his diaries are not narrowly churchy, but provide a fascinating picture of Britain and her élite in the 1930s and ‘40s. A great array of personalities pass through the pages - bishops, priests, kings and queens, members of the British and foreign royal families, prime ministers, politicians, viceroys of India, musicians, portrait painters, soldiers, diplomats including Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi ambassador to London, and an assortment of scamps and scallywags. Don had a ringside view of the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935, the king’s death and burial in 1936, and Abdication of Edward VIII later that year. He was closely involved with the arrangements for the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937 and he provides a vivid description of the great ceremony.
As Don wrote his diaries throughout the 1930s and ‘40s, he honed his skills as an observer and diarist. As he did so, the subjects about which he wrote darkened. When Don went to Lambeth in 1931, Germany - often called the Weimar Republic after the town where its constitution was framed - was grappling with the consequences of the Great Depression. Don’s diary entries chart the rise of Adolf Hitler, Nazi oppression of the German Churches, Italian aggression in Ethiopia, German expansion, hopes for peace raised and dashed by Hitler, the Munich Crisis, and the agonising descent into the Second World War. On one occasion when he was nearly killed by a V1 rocket, Don wrote poignantly that he hoped he would survive until the end of the war in order to see Nazism vanquished.
Don wrote about some very serious and painful subjects, but he had a wry sense of humour which from time to time bubbled to the surface. He could also be very perceptive about people: observing Anthony Eden in the House of Commons in the 1940s, for example, he recorded his impression that he was not a great leader and lacked ‘bigness’ of character, which, given the 1956 Suez Crisis, was surprisingly prescient. The diaries contain many surprises: to cite two examples, Archbishop Lang and Stanley Baldwin both claimed to dislike hereditary peerages (it did not stop them each accepting one).
As we read Don’s diaries, we are transported back to the world and culture of Britain in the 1930s and ‘40s. In some ways, it all seems very remote and distant. In other ways, it is surprising how much remains recognisable eighty or ninety years later. In the pages of the diary, we closely observe Alan Don and Archbishop Lang - two very human men, with strengths and weaknesses, and much quiet kindness and decency - busily working away, endeavouring to do their best, during some very difficult and often tragic years of British history.
Don retired as Dean of Westminster in 1959 and moved to a flat in Canterbury. Muriel stayed in London, and predeceased him in 1963. When Don died in 1966, his nephew Robin Don had to clear out his flat. Robin had a recollection of having scooped up all Don’s papers and put them in a large tin trunk. During one of my visits to Norfolk, we went in search of it, but only encountered cobwebs.
“As we read Don’s diaries, we are transported back to the world and culture of Britain in the 1930s and ‘40s. In some ways, it all seems very remote and distant. In other ways, it is surprising how much remains recognisable eighty or ninety years later.
Robin sadly died in 2018. The following year his daughter Jo telephoned me unexpectedly to say they had finally located the trunk. The key was long lost, but they had managed to open the lock with a grinding machine.
I drove up to Norfolk, expecting it to be something of a wild goose chase. In the event, I had rather a surprise. The trunk smelled a bit musty, but was full to the brim with papers and documents of all kinds, many of which Don had sorted into files before he died. There was correspondence with the Royal Household, 10 Downing Street, Parliamentary figures, the Athenaeum, Nobody’s Friends, The Club (founded by Dr Johnson), sermons, orders of service, photograph albums, notes about his life, ancient cricket caps, medals, papers and photographs from the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II - and a small phial of anointing oil from the Queen’s coronation that had turned over the years into gingery granules, like brown sugar.
It took me three visits to go through the contents of the trunk and make notes. Its discovery turned out to be the most marvellous stroke of luck because the papers provided extra information and filled in some of the gaps about Don’s life, which helped me write a better and rounder introduction to the book.
The documents in the trunk also brought Don vividly to life. They revealed a very kind man, whose own unhappy domestic circumstances meant he was especially sensitive to the sufferings of others. Following his death in 1966, Don’s ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey beneath a stone bearing the Latin inscription Alan Campbell Don decanus MCMXLVI-MCMLIX sanctus sedulous nemini non amabilis hanc aedem unice curavit ornavit dilexit, which can be translated: ‘Alan Campbell Don, Dean 1946-1959, holy, assiduous, to none not amiable, he greatly loved, embellished and cared for this church.’
Robert Beaken, is editor of Faithful Witness, The Confidential Diaries of Alan Don, Chaplain to the King, the Archbishop and the Speaker, 1931-1946 (SPCK 2020)
This article appears in the January 2021 Issue of Life and Work
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