Was I the picture of evil incarnate?

Not long after Catriona and I first met, her husband painted my head and shoulders portrait in oils as I sat next to an open window in Provence with my shirt off. The result was an astonishing and rather brilliant study of spiritual depravity. But I was too amazed and humbled to have my portrait painted in oils by a professional artist of international repute to much care about the result. Nor had I expected a photographic likeness. And at the same time I was genuinely delighted that at least I didn’t look like a bourgeois.

Later the painting arrived in Devon in the post, beautifully and expensively framed, and I hung it in pride of place above the mantelpiece. But the image of a man so obviously rejoicing in evil had a universally disquieting effect on those who saw it. Forty years as a medical missionary in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, for example, were insufficient to brace the vicar against such an exquisite depiction of an evil spirit.