A new feature: David Suchet gives 20 answers

What is your favourite time of year?
I love spring. The sooner it starts the better.
 The daffodils coming through, new life,
animals courting, leaves coming on trees,
new smells, new things to look at, new birth – it’s wonderful.

Where would you like your mortal remains
 to go?
I’m deliberating this question with my wife as we speak – whether we get cremated or buried. Theologically, what does that mean? Are we to take the raising of the bodies at Jesus’ second coming literally? So it’s still a question for us.

When did you last pray?
Just before this, that it would go well.

Pick three words to describe your faith.
A journey, sometimes weak, sometimes strong.

What is your favourite hymn?
My favourite song of all is “Amazing Grace”.

Do you dance?
Not very well. I like moving to music, but I don’t know if you’d call it dancing.

Does God have a sense of humour?
Enormous! He laughs at me all day! Make your plans, God laughs.

Where is a spiritual place for you?
Deep down in my solar plexus, the interior of my being, because that’s where I’m told God is.

Are things getting better or worse?
They have to be getting better because God’s in charge.

What was your favourite subject at school?
I loved all sports, because I was good at them, so that was my identity at school. I was not a good scholar and I hated all lessons. If I liked any at all it was because the masters said: “You’re OK.” On the sports field, I was released.

What is your proudest achievement?
Reading the whole Bible out loud.

Which Old Testament character would you most like to meet?
There are so many, so many extraordinary people. Pushed against the wall, I would
 say Moses.

Who was your childhood hero?
Hopalong Cassidy. Any cowboys.

What is your favourite bit of the Bible?
Jesus’ intimate conversation with the disciples before they went to the Garden of Gethsemane, in which he talked about the vine, the branches, the Spirit coming. It’s the most intimate conversation of his recorded in the whole Bible, and the most wonderful passage to read out loud, which I do very often.

Least favourite?
The hardest bits – the genocide in the Old Testament – which we know God was in charge of and allowed. It’s very tough but his ways are not our ways. We have to live happily being held in mystery.

What is the best thing in the zoo?
I don’t go now, but as a child I would sit and watch the big cats. Then, they were in cages and they would spend all day walking, turning, walking, turning. It was mesmerising.

What would be your one question to God?
Why me?

Is there life after death?
Yes! As a Christian I can’t think otherwise, Christ proves it.

What does church mean to you?
Great sadness, and great thankfulness as well. There’s a lot of work to be done.

What makes a good day?
Laughter.

David Suchet is an actor. His recorded reading of the Bible, released on CD and mp3, is now available as an app, the NIV Audio Bible, for £19.99. Hear Psalm 23 and Genesis 1 in the digital edition of Reform

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This article was published in the February 2016 edition of  Reform.

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