ABSTRACT
The experience of growing up as the child of a clergyman is peculiar in many respects;
growing up the child of a bishop is, if anything, even more peculiar. British society
has borne witness to the increasing marginalization of the Church of England during
the twentieth century, and the authority of its leaders has been eroded, yet bishops
remain in the House of Lords, carry grandiose titles, officiate over public ceremony
and occupy networks of civic hierarchy that remain the preserve of the privileged
and the focus of limited but not insignificant regional power. But apart from their
fathers being members of the social and spiritual elite, ‘episcopal children’ are also
subject to a set of domestic arrangements that can be traced back to the conditions
associated with parochial ministry. Indeed, it is these arrangements that characterize
one of the formative experiences earlier identified as central to this study.
