BOOK REVIEW-More than Nine Lessons and Carols

Long time Head of History at the University of York and Lay Canon of the Minster, Allen Warren says he reluctantly accepted the task of writing the biography of the man best known for creating Nine Lessons and Carols with its now famous bidding prayer, first heard six weeks after the end of the First World War. The book documents his ministry at King's College, Cambridge and later at York Minster—an appointment, it is suggested, that was a result just as much of old school ties and circumstance as anything else—although one that Milner-White embraced as a "Civic Dean".
Perhaps the author’s reticence to take up the pen is understandable when we discover the complexity of the task. Most of Milner-White’s personal papers were destroyed (by him) shortly before his death. What remains of the man behind the liturgy are diverse (and divided) recollections from those who knew him. Two Archbishops of York are quoted as holding very different impressions of the man.

Maybe it’s impossible to read any biography outside the lens of one’s own life?

 

I found myself wondering whether Milner-White might have been less mercurial and easier for some to get along with had he enjoyed the companionship of a man (or woman) at home with whom to chew the cud after work—as I do.

 

Throughout the book he is portrayed as a resolutely celibate priest—but there are plenty of overt suggestions about his sexuality, not least the summative quote that he was: “King of Kings and Queen of Deans.”

 

This sense of reading about the separate threads of a life left hanging and unresolved extends beyond matters of sexuality.

 

From a well-to-do family, his curacy was one of the first in the new Diocese of Southwark, in a group of parishes including St Paul’s, Lorrimore Square (the post-war building is one I know well). Despite which, the biography paints Milner-White as showing apparently little interest in the plight of the urban poor or in improving social mobility, and his sermons are described as being over the heads of much of the congregation.

 

Yet his artistic and liturgical legacy seems to point in a different direction. In his later ministry he favoured commissioning stained-glass artists whose work was less conceptual and more obviously didactic. He was inspired by Percy Dearmer’s Litany of Labour and promoted the teaching of heritage crafts. His most famous legacy—the service of Nine Lessons and Carols—notably involves the participation of all ages as readers, alongside clergy and laity alike. First devised for use out of term time on Christmas Eve 1918, it intentionally brought together town and gown. The suggestion that Milner-White was aloof or unconcerned with the lives of ordinary people seems hard to reconcile with what we know about his artistic and liturgical endeavours.

 

What the book lacks in detail about Milner-White’s personal life it makes up for in terms of context—describing the changing nature of life in Cambridge and the wider Church of England during the inter-war period.

 

His “difficult side” is evidenced in his dogmatic determinism in certain areas, most visible in his role as Dean of York Minster during the period of reconstruction after the war. While the biography suggests he appeared relatively unconcerned with wider diocesan affairs or national church politics, it also explains how involved he was in the Diocesan Advisory Committee and offers a brief but interesting overview of how the faculty system—the equivalent of planning permission for church buildings—came into being, rather hurriedly, after the war.

 

Arriving at York Minster during the Second World War, Milner-White quickly became involved in committees to preserve and restore the ancient city, as well as overseeing the restoration of the medieval glass in more than 80 windows of the cathedral.

 

His own art collection—including one of the largest assemblages of twentieth-century Japanese pottery outside Japan—was donated to the City Art Gallery after his death.

 

The art of pottery, he said, best expressed beauty in its purest form. That same quest for beauty can surely be seen in his writing of prayers and liturgy, including his involvement in several National Days of Prayer. One of the few personal documents to survive is a letter he sent to an ex-chorister:

 

“The greatest gift of God to us in this life is the power, and the duty, and the reality, and the joy of living in the ETERNAL. Beauty in all its forms speaks an eternal voice, not only flowers, music, and the song of birds, but the lovely thought, and the thought and act of love. All these have an eternal value. They are part of our inheritance now, not a heritage that will come to us in the future. Much is to come to us in the future, but we have so much more now than most mortals allow their eyes to see and their hearts to understand.”

 

Perhaps that quotation comes closer than any biography to summing up the man, his life and ministry.

 

More Than Nine Lessons and Carols: The Life of Eric Milner-White (1884–1963) by Allen Warren was published by Sacristy Press in 2025.