Last Words by Richard Holloway review: 'a warm and moving memoir'

It is an affectionate and moving memoir of his early life and of a working-class youth in Alexandria (Dunbartonshire, not Egypt). The depiction of his parents is loving and moving; he doesn't shrink from their difficulties in what seems to have been an up-and-down marriage. Likewise, the depiction of conditions in Alexandria during the war and the next decade is both warm and critical; living conditions were deplorable yet loving families survived them. It is good to be reminded just what an important part was played by the cinema in these pre-television years. Programmes in Alexandria changed in the middle of the week, presumably because there were usually full houses.

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It is well known that Holloway is a bishop who lost his faith, though on the evidence of this memoir he retains a deep loyalty to the Church.

He has written before about his gradual loss of faith, a process which occurred even while he continued to serve his flock, many of whom, in the second half of the 20th century, must have had their own doubts and misgivings. What became impossible for him was the belief in personal immortality, life after death, and this belief has indeed withered in much of Christian Europe and America.

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Many still find comfort in the thought of being united with husband, wife, parents and friends after death, though, mischievously, Holloway recalls a woman who, hearing the minister promise that she would be united with her late husband again, muttered that this would give her no pleasure for she had "hated the old bugger" when he was alive.

Like so many who contemplate the decline of the Christian faith, Holloway quotes Matthew Arnold's lines in Dover Beach, about faith being on the ebb. Well, that was almost 200 years ago now, and, while the tide may be well out, the beach will welcome its return.

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Happily this little book isn't all about the loss of faith - it is also a warm and moving memoir. Now it seems that Holloway is content to live in uncertainty; yet his affection for the church remains. Reflecting on on the closure of a church where he worshipped as a boy, he seems to suggest that, while it served and strengthened so many, its relevance, or the need for it, has simply vanished. Yet though he doubts the existence of God and the afterlife, he doesn't deny the consolations of faith.

Last Words, by Richard Holloway, Swift, £16.99. Richard Holloway is appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 24 August.