Will Self: My sermon on love

The last time Will Self was in Beverley he had an unexpected encounter.

“It was four or five years ago and I met a woman in a queue who had been with my dad in an air raid shelter in Regent’s Park during the Second World War,” he tells me.

He is back in the popular East Yorkshire market town this weekend when he will be taking part in this year’s Beverley Literature Festival.

Self is an uncompromising writer and broadcaster best known for his caustic wit and dark, surreal novels, including Umbrella which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

The festival organisers commissioned Self to come up with a secular sermon which he will deliver from the pulpit of Beverley Minster on Saturday.

Never one to avoid controversial topics or the bigger, existential questions he’s chosen to interrogate a subject close to everyone’s heart – love.

Following his sermon, Self will be joined by broadcaster and writer Mark Lawson to unpick some of the ideas presented in the sermon and gauge the audience’s response.

It’s likely to be an entertaining evening and describing his approach to his talk, Self says: “My secular sermon on love will, I hope, make my audience extremely sad and lovelorn – and in particular will reorder their understanding of Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians: Love abideth not – rather, like Elvis, it has quit the building...”

The idea of love, and its association with being the key to happiness, dates back centuries in the Western world and is symbolised by fabled fictional characters such as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Self will be talking specifically about notions of what he calls ‘romantic love’ and his belief that it is more of a hindrance than a help. “I want to look at romantic love and kismet, this idea that there is one person out there who you’re fated to be with, or not as the case may very well be,” he says.

He believes it’s a myth that modern society for all its supposed sophistication is still enthralled by. “It’s a very powerful ideology and its one that we have come to define our relationships by. But I’d venture to suggest it doesn’t serve us very well when it comes to the paradigm of lovers. It’s a damaging myth that makes us feel like emotional failures unless we have this perfect union.”

But have our attitudes towards love and romance changed over the years? “They have changed but the ideology, and I believe it is an ideology, is still there. It’s rather like the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, the party has changed but we still hear the word ‘socialism’ every now and then.

“I’ve met people in their 60s and 70s who are in their fourth or fifth relationship and each revolves around the idea they are meant to be together and this sits very oddly in my view.”

Self believes our long-held attitudes towards love aren’t “fit for purpose” in the modern world. “Romantic love encourages us to place one person above all others and this encourages us to disregard others, and this spurious hierarchy creates all sorts of problems.

“A lot of people don’t feel they can talk about it. We are haunted by a sense of failure, that something must be wrong with us if we’re not part of some emotional gloop.”

So what, then, is his idea of love? “The most romantic thing I ever did in Yorkshire was walk from Flamborough Head to Spurn Point within either three feet of the cliff head or the cliff base. It’s never been done again because of the erosive capabilities of the Holderness coast.”

Will Self is appearing at Beverley Minster on October 8 at 7.30pm. For more details about Beverley Literature Festival visit www.litup.org.uk or call 01482 392699.