Taking Stock: Confessions of a City Priest - Tapa dura

The twenty-year diary of a man who mixes with all, from the rich and powerful to the beautiful and grotesque.

Victor Stock is the Rector of St Mary le Bow in London. Through ‘style and accessibility’ he has resurrected the fame and fortune of the famous ‘Bow-bells’ church. One of the church’s new ventures has been an award winning restaurant in the crypt. Another is the lunchtime Dialogues, the church’s regular weekly meetings with personalities to which all are welcome.

Victor’s diaries are filled with stories from the Dialogues with the likes of delightful Judy Dench and the black-stockinged Diana Rigg; the brilliant A S Byatt and the kindly Sir Yehudi Menhuin; the sensible Margaret Beckett and the first guest to be shouted at, Michael Portillo.

There are theatrical moments in the presence of Royalty: the Queen who must think him positively dangerous, the Queen Mother who winks at him in the Archbishop's sermon, and the Princess of Wales, sexually seductive in an almost virginal way.

What Victor has thought, felt, done and seen can tell us many things about the best and the worst in people – but in the end the book is a celebration and an illuminating glimpse at humanity.

Victor Stock is surprising. He is not what you expect a Vicar to be.