QUENTIN LETTS, with a loud voice summoned the large gathering together at the village church, featuring the community’s great and the good, including the Dean of Hereford, Revd Canon Sarah Brown and the church’s new rector, Rev'd Canon Laura Hewitt.

He outlined that the book ‘Nunc’ starts off in the modern day but delves back to biblical Jerusalem in a bid to come to terms with life and death in modern England.

He explained that Alex Symons was a sixty-something Englishman, “The sort we all know who wears corduroy trousers and sports jackets, and maybe drinks a bit too much, when he is given bad news after being stuck on the NHS’s post-Covid backlog,” Quentin said.

“He is told he is dying of cancer and only has six months to live. He takes some pain killers and goes to the wine bar in a town, not dissimilar to Hereford.

“As he is tottering home, he sees that the cathedral evensong is about to start and enters the building just as the choir is rehearsing Nunc Dimittis (the song of Simeon) and as he listens, he has a vision of Jerusalem in the time of Herod, which allows the exploration the life of Simeon to be conducted.”

Quentin then joins with the Hereford Choral Society singers and the cathedral choral school scholars as they perform the canticles prayer, Nunc Dimittis.

Quentin pointed out that the story of Simeon is contained within St Luke Gospel, ‘But we only get 10 verses,” he said.

“Simeon had an affair whilst serving in the army and wasn’t around when his wife Hannah died. This is when an angel told him that as his penance he will not die until he has seen the Messiah.

“He goes and waits and waits at a Temple and eventually a young couple bring this baby into the religious building and he lifts the young child into his arms and he immediately knows this is the Messiah.

“However, there is a downside amidst this joy, for him, he now realises he is now a ‘gonna’ and reluctlently accepts this dilemma.”

Quentin reiterated there are only 10 verses of the gospels in the New Testament and that there were many gaps and he said that Nunc! hopes to fill these in.

“I’ve always loved this story. It was featured in my illustrated Bible I treasured as a child.

“From my earliest days I’ve always asked myself who was Simeon? Who were his friends? What did they think of King Herod – that slightly Putinesque figure? And what was it like in first century BC Jerusalem?”

Quentin continued: “Well, that’s the basic concept of the book. It’s got a bit of Asterix to it, it’s got a bit of Colm Tóibín’s Testament of Mary to it as well as a dose of Monty Python’s A life of Brian.

“It also has stories surrounding Italian author Giovannino Guareschi about Don Camillo, a parish priest in Italy and his constant battles with the local communist mayor.

“Mr Guareschi had a fantastic set of moustaches; proper soup strainer jobs and I dedicate this book to him along with my brother Alexander and sister Penny, who both died of cancer.

“If the next Archbishop of Canterbury had Giovannino Guareschi’s moustaches and maybe he smoked a pipe, my goodness, we’d be a stronger church.” The comment caused noisy appreciative mumour among the audience.

Quentin said that his book also addresses two mysteries. Why do we talk about the Three Wise Men? “They were three blundering eejits,” he joked.

“Herod is flattered by the gifts, yet when the visitors alerted King Herod to the existence the new king of the Jews, he calls for the Massacre of the Innocents. This is where Simeon must do his bit to save the swaddled Prince of Peace.

“The other mystery that has never been addressed by the Bible is how do the Holy family escape the massacre? We are never told that.”

Quentin states that this book in its own way tries to answer those mysteries.

He added: “And because we’ve got the reporter from Ross Gazette among us, I owe the county a grovelling apology.

“This is because those of you who have bought the book and been observant, may have noticed that it states that I live in ‘Hertfordshire’, which received a loud guffaw from within the church.

“I still live here in How Caple and don’t intend moving any time soon,” he quipped.

“I mentioned this error at the London book launch, and I got a number of newspaper diary stories out of it.

“The upshot of all this that the book will be reprinted in due course. But it’s an appalling schoolboy error.

“But it did fill an old dictum where every diary story should have one fact; one generalisation and one very slight inaccuracy.”

Quentin observed that Simeon was a great fatalist adding he was the first fatalist in Christendom and is arguably the very first Christian of them all.

Simeon, was an old man and tour guide at the temple in Jerusalem in a city nominally controlled by a Roman under a ‘special military operation’.

Quentin concludes his sermon by stating that the character of Alex Symons at the beginning of the book is based around his brother, Alexander, who died of cancer four years ago aged 62.

“My brother, when he was dying of cancer, fought it and fought it, until his first grandchild was born. He picked up baby Ludo in his arms and from that moment he was able to accept his pending death. It was a Simeon-esq moment.

“A photograph taken shortly before he died, Alexander is said to be displaying the certain, seraphic smile of somebody who has seen calamity dethroned and is now ready to sing at the Gates of Paradise.

“And that was the core reason why I wrote this book.

“In the prayer book’s funeral service it states that in the midst of life we are in death. However, I think this can be turned around and looking at Simeon or my brother and you can say in the midst of death we are in life.

“I believe Nunc! is a heartfelt and fitting tribute to him.”

● On April 24 Quentin Letts will be giving a talk from 7pm at St Mary’s Church in Ross-on-Wye about his moving new novel, Nunc! The event is being staged in partnership with Rossiter Books.