Constrained: A Crack at Christianity

by Frank Kendall

Even for senior government officials without scruples, public service in England has not been easy over recent years as incontinent ministers and local government bigwigs have constantly chopped and changed things - often for no good reason. Trying to serve the best interests of the public as a senior official with firm Christian principles has been even more difficult, let alone following a call to priesthood at the same time. After chapters on his early life (starting in a Yorkshire slum and ending at Cambridge University), the author recounts and analyses his many years of having a crack at Christianity despite being constrained along the way by people who have been accidentally engaged in or deliberately bent on taking a crack at Christianity. He suggests a number of ways in which public and church administration could be improved from top to bottom. But there is far more to ‘Constrained’ than the content of a management manual. It is a mine of entertaining stories involving personal encounters with zany comedian Spike Milligan, prime ministers (benign Harold Wilson, tetchy Margaret Thatcher), a general who got the wrong end of the stick, ambassadors and permanent secretaries good and bad, purveyors of environmental nonsense, and other people of some notoriety - including various bishops, some better than others. The book also covers embarrassments in both Houses of the UK Parliament, a diplomatic incident in Paris, boozy official banquets in immediately post-revolutionary red China and plenty of other items of general interest. You will frown a little and chuckle a lot as you read ‘Constrained’. And you might also enjoy a trilogy of risque novels which Frank has also written entitled 'The Adventures of Alex - ‘Vibrant Versatility’, ‘Fervent Flexibility’ and 'Transcendent Tranquillity' (also available on Kindle).

246 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 23, 2012