The Vicar of Baghdad – ‘Israel is the most intelligent country in the world’

‘We weren’t even at opposite ends of the table. Because he was in the eyes, and I was fighting over my own bit of space to keep the patient alive.’ If you’re surprised to learn that Canon Andrew White used to work alongside Bashar al-Assad in the same London operating theatre, then you clearly haven’t met White – perhaps better known as the Vicar of Baghdad. Once you have, nothing about him will surprise you. A tall, bearish, immediately likeable man, his enthusiasm is contagious, whether it’s for vanilla ice cream, or intercession in war zones.

When he talks to me via Skype from Jordan – a couple of days after we’ve met in Jerusalem – he’s half thinking about flying back, just to get a shofar, so that he can celebrate Rosh Hashanah properly. ‘I’m quite used to doing crazy things!’ he explains. And some of the things he’s done certainly do strike you as crazy.