Michelle Guinness

Michelle Guinness is a freelance journalist, a PR consultant, a researcher, writer and presenter for most major British TV companies; also Radio Two and Radio Four. She has her own daily lunchtime programme on BBC local radio. She's written for magazines and newspapers. She's also written seven books and as well as that she's worked for the Blackpool Wyre and Field Primary Care Trust and the Blackpool Social Services. As one of the speakers at Detling festival this summer, (Cross Rhythms were the media partners), Jonathan Bellamy decided to find out more about this amazing lady.

Jonathan: You're very busy!

Michele: Yes but I haven't done it all at once. I know women multi-task. That is just a bit much.

Jonathan: It is a bit much. I guess you must thoroughly enjoy your life though in terms of the diversity of things you're involved with.

Michele: It has been an enormous mix, yes. I am no longer with the NHS I have to say. Doing communication for the NHS is a real challenge; trying to help doctors and nurses to communicate better with patients, but I loved it. I moved on though and I'm concentrating more on the writing side of things now.

Jonathan: What are you currently writing at the moment? Are you in the middle of another book?

Michele: Well - I'm going to be launching a book called Autumn Leaves - A Season In France. My husband and I had three months leave a couple of years ago and just before it we managed to buy a house in France. It was a major miracle. Now miracles never happen to me but this one did. It was absolutely extraordinary. We almost have an X marks the spot experience which I describe in the book. But it was just as well because we had a bit of a minor/major nightmare really.

Jonathan: Tell us about it.

Michele: Well we found ourselves in the middle of an almighty legal wrangling over our boundaries. We arrived in a village where nobody was speaking to each other and it just went from bad to worse really. We thought we were going to be absolutely financially wiped out for a lot of the time. But...what happened - well you'll have to read the book. We had some wonderful times as well. I'll just tell you very quickly a little thing that happened; we really wanted to be peacemakers in our village. We really did feel that that was what we were called to do. So one day I'm collecting blackberries from the bushes outside my house and my neighbour there in France came out and she asked me what I was doing. Well we have this thing in England called blackberry and apple crumble, which she hadn't a clue what I was talking about. So a few hours later I took her one around. She was absolutely overwhelmed. She just broke down and said nobodies ever done that for me before. So - she said I've got something for you. So we waited and about a week later a tap on my door; opened the door and she's there with a tray. She said, you collect blackberries from my hedge, I collect snails from your gate.

Jonathan: Oh - did you cook them and eat them?

Michele: Well listen, peacemaking's not easy you know. They were already cooked and they were in a butter sauce, which is full of garlic. The garlic was great. I think the snail tasted a bit like a spare part from a car. Not that I've ever sat and chewed a car.

Jonathan: Did you find it easy to connect with part of the community or did you feel like an outsider?

Michele: I think both. In Italy we understood what it was like to be an immigrant and it really made me think about what some of our visitors to this country feel. But I have to say that the people were wonderfully welcoming and eventually, yes we have come to feel part of the scene.

Jonathan: That's fascinating. Now you're married to a vicar - Peter Grattan Guinness

Michele: Don't hold that against me.

Jonathan: I don't hold it against you. What's fascinating, your journey of faith is Christian at the moment, but of course you started as a Jew - you were brought up in a practising Jewish family weren't you?

Michele: I was.

Jonathan: Describe some of your journey of faith.

Michele: I loved the festivals: Judaism is a very colourful faith. All of our festivals were celebrated in the home. I used to love going to my Grandmothers for Passover. The smell, the drama, the history, the stories and you know the worship and the laughter and the jokes and the food; everything is totally integrated in Judaism. So that was the great part. On the other hand there was always a bit sort of for me missing at the end of the story, that I couldn't quite work out. You know - here we were told that we have this great God who'd looked after us through the centuries; yet of course I had to come to terms with the Holocaust as well, as a Jewish child. If I had been there what would have happened to me? There was always this sense that God was a God of history but he wasn't near, he wasn't close. One day a friend of mine suggested I read the New Testament. I couldn't find one; then I remembered that it was probably on my parents forbidden books shelf along with the Lady Chatterley's Lover and that's exactly where I found it. I took it to my room with the Lady Chatterley and started to read it by torchlight under the bedclothes because it's forbidden. I had Lady Chatterley on one side and I had John's Gospel on the other that I was reading. I have to say that there was nothing in Lady Chatterley that precocious little wretches don't know already, but... there is everything in John's gospel. It was a total revelation. I mean I knew nothing about Jesus whatsoever. My little nephew always said when he was little - he's big now - Easter's about someone who died on a cross, but sshh we don't say who. I mean I knew nothing. As I read John's gospel; this man just seemed to be the most amazing man who'd ever lived and he spoke truth. I thought, I've got to decide either he is who he says he is, the Messiah or he's completely bonkers and just a charlatan. All of it was truth and to me no-one had ever spoken like that man. I was just completely knocked over by him. I thought, I can't believe he doesn't tell the truth and I can't believe he isn't real. I just said I want to follow you and knowing what that would cost. I thought oh heck - my parents what are they going to say; I'll get turfed out; it's going to cost me my community, my friends and my relationships, everything and everyone I know. I just felt he was worth following; he was just so real to me; he'd become so real and it's not been easy but it's been wonderful.

Jonathan: How did it affect your Jewishness?

Michele: When I told my mother I was a christian she said, look at your nose girl in the mirror whose going to believe you're not a Jew? You can't ever get away from your Jewishness. I wouldn't want to because one of the things that really hit me between the eyes was that Jesus was a Jew like me. Nobody had ever told me that before. If I may say so I did find christianity at the beginning quite dreary by comparison. Not christianity, I beg your pardon, never; but the church, the way christianity was expressed and it doesn't need to be like that. One of the things I'm going to be talking about at Detling is that Christianity can be enormous fun. Particularly when you get in touch with your Jewish roots and you start partying and all the colour comes back, the food and the jokes and the joy. What I try and do is to bring a lot of my Jewishness into my Christian faith. Really I'm saying to a lot of people, really the new kind of Church that really reflects our wonderful God and Saviour who was the funniest and liveliest and joyful most joyful of human beings who ever lived.

Jonathan: That's fantastic. Something else I'd like to ask you about. Obviously people who've not heard of you, the first thing they'll recognise is your name, because it's such a famous name - the Guinness name. Obviously your husband's ancestors were very influential in their different spheres; in brewing, banking and missionary work. Particularly I know you wrote a book about Henry Grattan Guinness. Can you talk a little bit about him?

Michele: Well, yes when you were speaking about the famous Guinness's, I just wanted to say yes and I wish we'd had the shares. When I went home and said to my father, Dad I'm going to marry somebody who's not Jewish; you know I know that's going to upset you but he is one of the Guinness family, his Great Grandfather is Guinness the brewer. My Dad just looked at me and said, do you have to pick a poor relative? Peter was a preacher, but there is in that ancestry a real sort of charisma. Peter's grandfather Henry Grattan Guinness gave away all his shares, went without a penny in his pocket to preach, to be an itinerant preacher. He became very very famous on a par with a preacher like Spurgeon. They were like film stars; they were celebs of their day. He was a tremendous preacher, thousands would turn out to hear him. You long to think could I preach like that today? I'd give my right arm. Just the power of it. The extraordinary thing about him was he did a lot of studying of the stars. He was an astronomer and he was a geologist. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Geology and a fellow of the Royal College of Astronomy. He studied the Bible and prophecy. When he died in 1910 he wrote in his Bible that he foresaw 1914 and 1948 as being key years in terms of the end of the age in which we live. In terms of the Jewish return to the state. Well of course 1918 was about the declaration and 48 was the independence of the state of Israel. So extraordinary when he died in 1910 there was no jiggery pokerry; it was all from studying the book of Daniel and working out the prophecies according to lunar years; according to a calendar that hadn't been done before and studies in the book of Ezekiel on the same basis. He didn't say anymore, he wasn't saying he knew the year Jesus was going to come back, he said we don't know the year; all we've got are pointers and signs, but we've got two big pointers. So, quite an extraordinary man.

Jonathan: And you write about him in your book, is it The Guinness Spirit?

Michele: Well, it's actually the new edition called The Genius of Guinness and it's published by Ambassador.

Jonathan: Fantastic

Michele: He had some amazing children who had hair-raising campaigns all over the world. They did huge amounts to alleviate poverty in the East End of London at the turn of the twentieth century.

Jonathan: A very influential family. Michele it's been fabulous to talk to you and time runs very quickly. Thanks very much for sharing with us today.