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On a visit to prison, shows Rowan Williams is a funny, modest side - and the enthusiasm for unspectacular projects

The Archbishop sat in an easy chair in a chapel that was wrong in subtle ways. The glass in the windows was thick and whorled, impossible to see through, and the discs were not separated from lead, but thick concrete in small circles rather than a human could to squeeze through. The ushers were broad-shouldered men in pressed shirts stood quietly against the walls.

The men entered quietly and seemed tired, as if they had reached a long way from a local fashion never went. A few wore rosaries and crosses. Saw two or three hard muscles with tattoos and sharp. They sat in a loose circle in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury on plain paper as well as his chairs. He did not pray. They began to imagine, just as they would if he were a new inmate.

"I 'm doing life for murder, come from a drug sequence. Welcome to Grendon." "I' ve been 34 years inside. Doing life for murder, was here before. I have difficulty in dealing with people in authority. Welcome to Grendon. "\" I 'm doing life for killing my friend. I come here for me to understand ourselves and why I get certain routes to us. Welcome to Grendon. "

"I 'm doing twice sentenced to life imprisonment. This is really hard. Welcome to Grendon." The young of a man with raised eyebrows, large, deep-set eyes and a look of sincerity and pain.

"Obscene Acts. ... Attempted murder. For three years here. Second time."

Grendon is no ordinary prison. It is a unique experiment in the prison that has to go for 50 years. In Grendon prisoners are all members of a therapeutic community as well. You must know who they are talking about, and why they came there, in the hope that they change and keep away in the future. Talking about these things is a dangerous sign of weakness in most of the rest of the prison.

But "this place runs on honesty and truth," said one prisoner. "If something happened to you, you must then it happens to other members of the group \."

The only way to get a feel for what is received in order to be exposed, so that if Rowan Williams came to visit, they sat him down, as they do to most visitors, as if he were part of a therapy group were. As she led them asked him questions.

How do you get to be archbishop of Canterbury? ". By the very evil in a past life" \ When the laughter died, he gave a careful explanation of the process, carefully managed confusing until a Catholic prisoner said: "You 'elected re, as the Pope "Yes, Williams said," Although the Pope doesn 't have a prime minister to be feared. "He went on the five planes, he thought his work composed, not the bishop for East Kent enumerate His" .. a kind of visiting President of the worldwide family of Anglican churches, which I try, where churches are in trouble "He spoke as if the most important and worth of these jobs was the least in the eyes of the world: his diocesan bishop in East Kent (the other half of Kent will be looked after by the Bishop of Rochester). As for his job allegedly runs the Church of England, he described it as "meetings, paperwork, decisions about money."

Someone raised the royal wedding. "Big surprise: the first person to ask," said Williams, and got a hearty laugh. He did not sound in this context, woolly at all. No, no, said the prisoner. I wanted to know how you coped with all the attention.

"It 's about the habits you are trying to make: making time each day to be quiet with God, that'. S, which I answer am It 's very important to settle down and remind me what is his. Time God gives me not only give time I have to God. For me [prayer] is a question of trying to make a clear space in my head. "

He spoke about the daily prayer in the most careful, practical manner, almost as if it was therapeutic: \. "Sitting to breathe regularly, upright, breathe, and say a few simple words that I often say," Lord, have mercy on 'slowly, at intervals, and just leave it to calm my stomach. It doesn 't seem to always work. Sometime I do there for half an hour, and the thoughts just go galloping around like horses in the Grand National Assembly. Then I have to remind myself that this time God gives me, and not just time that I, God 'Then, still in the same self-assurance, he said: ". You tried to open the cellar door and be aware of the darkness under water. "

I thought of the Spirit brooded over the watery chaos in Genesis.

It was the closest he came formal sermon, or even talk about Jesus, and when a detainee asked about, "got what it is above, where you ve 'a \ pull whole," he said, the House of Lords, or perhaps the government, not the sky: "Do you think that MPs and so on, to talk about social exclusion, none of it at all?

"Good question," said Williams. "I'm a bit sceptical that they do … I think that prison ought to be about equipping people to be what they have got it in them to be. What if prisons were really like that?"

Grendon, as far as possible, bear this out. It is unique and has been for 50 years of its existence, because it is both a prison and a therapeutic community, where prisoners work with itself must, with each other and with the staff, the reasons for their misbehavior address. One prisoner said in the introduction session, which was the biggest surprise of the prison, what had happened to him .. "From the age of 10 I had just stuck two fingers up to society I hated the world but if you are honest with yourself and make yourself vulnerable, you will change."

It doesn 't work for all. Peter Bennett, the governor, a burly man with a strong touch of melancholy, describes his success in terms that sound ironic to you what they mean about some other prisoners to be realized. "We have very little self-injury very little bullying, a very low incidence of drugs - sometimes makes no difference Grendon, \ ..."

He doesn say 't so little success. "We are seeing - not breathtaking, unbelievable - but meaningful improvements Grendon is essentially and fundamentally a humane prison: underlying humanity is embedded in bricks and mortar, it is a place where people behave with great respect for each other \ ..."

There were also prisoners in the group, I saw, were again in the second time. But there is something remarkable, what happened there. "The trick is to run a Democratic committee in a hierarchical therapeutic prison. We have a room for therapy and balance that with security to allow \."

The high fences around the prison with barbed wire, all visitors pass through a kind of security airlock. This is a prison in order. The men are locked up all night and at midday. But they are treated like human beings, and encouraged to treat each other that as well. They seem to respond to it.

"In other prisons, people didn 't seem to have so much pride in their jobs \," said one prisoner. "But they 're not here, simply because they want the money.

"In the first carol service here I hit the number one governor, Peter Bennett, and he -.. '. S all nice [laughter] I was wondering what' s that about, he sees you as a person you softens your heart. "

It is exactly the kind of transformation that Williams believes most, For all his reputation as in. woolly thinker, he has to talk about these things in a practical way. Prayer works because it does center it. He was conscientious about religious language, except when he was asked to avoid doing this. When he asked at the end of the session, he has not even mention sin or forgiveness, but spoke as if healing and honesty were things that needed all of us without affectation.

After the prisoners left the meeting in order to be closed for lunch, Williams went upstairs to a meeting with the staff. He was not back when he donnish Ken Clarke 's attempts to cut the prisoners said. "We are on a very interesting time, where the huge cost of the ways that we currently things are not to be sustainable, the [present prison system] is invaluable for all eternity. Grendon has gone for half a century, and I hope we can all do something to take advantage of this window of opportunity. "

I had asked to come on this visit, because I couldn 't see the point of a formal interview. No it 's just that Williams does not like dealing with the media, although he makes clear - the question of a prisoner, whether he is one of the things he had said in public regrets, he immediately replied: "How long you have "The problem is that his position is irredeemably compromised on gay clergy. And since the only issue that the press believes that he has the real power to do something, his views on other issues are far less interesting.

But watching him at work so it seemed possible that he also believes his own opinion of the least interesting parts of his work. His enthusiasm when he spoke, turned everything around small and unspectacular projects.

Of all the different layers of his work were the only two that he has spoken with a real passion of his responsibilities in East Kent and his visits to suffering and persecuted church abroad. Maybe a room full of repentant murderer has a healthier atmosphere than a committee of church leaders convinced all of their own righteousness. In any case, at Grendon, he was funny, modest and simple in a way I never seen him in public. Even if he no longer has power in the government, as he has his own church, his visit, which was good at it. No wonder he believes in localism.