More on: Rowan Williams

The bay’s mouth swells, sucking the gale and spit into stone lungs, laying the ground for what the island tells, hoarsely: before the boats arrive, after the shops shut. Beach Sand shuffles amiably, like familiar words stroking and nosing one another, melismatic chant that slips and pours so quickly that you never see the razor…

Rowan Douglas Williams was born in Swansea, south Wales, in 1950, into a Welsh-speaking family, and was educated at Dynevor School in Swansea and Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he studied theology. After two years as a lecturer at the College of the Resurrection, near Leeds, he was ordained deacon in Ely Cathedral before returning to…