reconciliations and that following that path has helped him reconcile the different sides of his own self.
He is also quick to point out that many people have to endure far more than he did. He talks of people held captive in their own body, when disease or accident have taken away their ability to move. And he knows only too well of the many hostages who don’t get to come home at all.
Both Terry’s words and actions advocate the profound importance of having empathy: it is a fundamental tenet of his approach to life. He recounts meeting with the British mother of a man who was beheaded by terrorists in Iraq, who even in her terrible grief said that she knew her suffering was no different to that of a mother in Iraq who has lost her son through warfare or insurgency. ‘In that simple statement she summed up with tremendous courage something we should never forget: we are all members of the same human family. We all have fears, and hopes and aspirations. We all have our vulnerabilities, so we should be very careful before we attribute negative stereotypes to other people.’
Terry’s empathy helped him stick to the three rules he set himself when he realised that he’d been taken hostage: no regrets, no self-pity and no sentimentality. He also stuck to his principle of non-violence, a philosophy tested to the extreme when one day he found a gun in the toilet left accidentally by his guard. (Terry said ‘I think you’ve forgotten something’ and handed it back to him.)
So, how does one cope with four years of entirely unjust and unrelenting solitary confinement?
‘I did my best to structure each day. I would allocate a period of time to doing my exercises, then I would write for an hour or two in my head, then do mental arithmetic. And I spent a lot of time dreaming up poetry too. And then it would be time for some more exercises. And so on.’
I tell him it seems it would be impossibly hard to fill all those lonely hours. In another world-class example of being understated, Terry just nods and responds, ‘You know, the whole experience wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d just let me have some books.’
He claims there have been unintended benefits of the ordeal. It gave him the confidence to leave his salaried job afterwards and live a freer life. So one related piece of wisdom he is keen to pass on is that every disaster, or seeming disaster, in life can usually be turned around and something creative can emerge from it. ‘That is not to say such suffering is not difficult and damn hard, but it doesn’t need be totally destructive. It’s the way you approach it, and the way you approach life after.’
So, given that, what is his best advice for how to approach life?
‘It’s the same lesson I learnt in that cell. What you have to do is live for the day, you have to say, now is life, this very moment. It’s not tomorrow, it’s not yesterday, it’s now, so you have to live it as fully as you can. Invest in every day.’
After speaking to Terry, I will.
ABSOLUTELY LUMLEY
I’M AT AN AWARDS DO and the god of seating plans has smiled benevolently upon me. I’m sat next to Joanna Lumley, one of the UK’s most loved actresses, and also one of the country’s most prolific and effective activists. To talk to, she is as one would expect. Warm, inclusive, crush-inducing. But with these soft-edged charms come inspiring, hard-edged principles: a sense of civic duty, of justice, of doing the right thing. She is a heady combination of warm heart and iron will. Which explains that while her TV and film work would be a career to be proud of in itself, it is her commitments and contributions off screen that are the most remarkable.
Take the new Garden Bridge across the Thames in London. An idea soon to become reality, providing the most beautiful addition to the city this century. Everyone in London knows about it and everybody loves it. Just like Joanna Lumley. But what is less known is that it was entirely her idea, a concept she dreamt up and then agitated to make happen, bending the will of those who naively told her at first it couldn’t be done.
Or look at the issue of Nepalese Gurkha veterans (who served in the British armed forces before 1997), who have been historically denied the right to settle in the UK after fighting for the country – a morally bankrupt decision and one that needed reversing. It was an unfashionable and unfabulous fight, but one that Joanna Lumley took on unreservedly, using her charm, celebrity, conviction and sheer dogged resilience until the victory was achieved and those rights installed.
In short, she is no ordinary woman.
And when I give a short speech later at the awards do and say I’ve been sitting next to Joanna Lumley, the audience erupt into applause: everyone in the room loves her.
There was therefore a synchronicity to the advice she gave me.
‘The secret, darling, is to love everyone you meet. From the moment you meet them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start from a position that they are lovely and that you will love them. Most people will respond to that and be lovely and love you back and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you can then achieve the most wonderful things.’
Then she leant forward and whispered in my ear.
‘But get rid of any of the bastards that let you down.’
As I said: warm heart, iron will.
‘THE SECRET, DARLING, IS TO LOVE EVERYONE YOU MEET. FROM THE MOMENT YOU MEET THEM. GIVE EVERYONE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.’
– Joanna Lumley
THE ELOQUENT MR FRY
THE PREVIOUS TIME I SPOKE with Stephen Fry he was a robot. The setting was a tech conference, and he attended via an iPad attached to a cyborg-on-wheels, controlled remotely from a joystick and camera in his bedroom. This time, we’re chatting in person over afternoon tea, sipping from bone china cups in a cosy members’ club in London. The different interactions capture two sides of a fascinating man: on the one hand, a self-confessed techno-geek with an interest in the latest gadgets, and on the other a graceful British gentleman with a love of classic traditions and culture.
As you would imagine, meeting his real, rather than virtual, self is the richer of the two encounters. In person you experience his warmth and thoughtfulness, and a wonderful sense of complicity from the stories and confessions he weaves into the conversation. He’s an easy man to spend time with.
Modestly, he says advice is something he is wary of giving, but he does have a few thoughts he’d be happy to share. I am expecting something literary or spiritual, but surprisingly his first thought is a broadsiding of life-coaching. ‘One piece of advice I want to give is avoid all life-coach lessons; they are snake oil, without exception, and the art of stating the so-fucking-obvious it makes your nose bleed.’
I was not, it has to be said, expecting that.
When I query why, he expands further. One reason is ‘their obsession with goal-setting. Because if I meet my goals, what then? Is that it, is my life over? I met my goal, do I just set another one? What’s the meaning of the first goal if the second one has to be set? Or if I don’t meet it, am I a failure?’
As he talks, I subtly turn over the page in the notebook that
