TV art historian and nun Sister Wendy Beckett has died at the age of 88, it has been announced. In the s she became one of the most unlikely television stars. Emerging from her hermit-like existence in a caravan at a Carmelite monastery in Norfolk, she hosted unscripted BBC shows from galleries across the world. Born in South Africa, Sister Wendy moved as a child to Edinburgh, where her father studied medicine, joining a convent when she was BBC director of arts Jonty Claypole paid tribute, saying Sister Wendy had "a unique presentation style, a deep knowledge of and passion for the arts".
She also suggested that she only said yes to the BBC because she felt the need to make a small financial contribution to the monastery for her keep and had been forced by ill health to give up her work as a translator of medieval Latin manuscripts in the late 70s. In moments of candour, though, she would admit that she liked to share knowledge — she had originally joined a teaching order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur , in , but had to give up the classroom after having epileptic seizures brought on by stress.
And certainly those who accompanied her on the road enjoyed the more down-to-earth side she would display, enjoying a glass or two of wine in preference to tea or water to revive her when she felt faint, or counselling members of the crew on their romantic lives.
She even used to promise to enlist the nuns of Quidenham to pray that some of the unmarried women producers she worked with would find suitable partners. Her insights into the artists she encountered on screen struck a chord with many who had previously lacked the vocabulary and the confidence to feel at home in art galleries.
Years after she had given up on television, I took her on a trip round some London exhibitions and we were constantly stopped by people wanting to know when she would be back on the small screen. Wendy was born in Johannesburg to Aubrey and Dorothy Beckett.
I think Mother called me Wendy because she thought I would be small and pretty. She was probably rather taken aback when she got this lump of a child who did nothing but read. She was, by her own account, a frail girl. Had she been worldlier, she used to reflect, she would never have joined the Notre Dame de Namur sisters — the order that ran her own school — because she was physically unsuited to the rigours of classroom teaching. After graduating in style, however, she soldiered on for 17 years in convent schools in South Africa, feeling she had no alternative, until finally her health collapsed.
Her order agreed to her living thereafter under the protection of the Carmelites in Norfolk as a hermit, devoting herself to prayer. She dressed not as a Carmelite, but in a traditional black and white habit that she designed herself, merging features from several orders. Her caravan in the grounds of the Carmel was small, cold and basic, but was crammed with postcards and calendars of works of art.
The order then sent Wendy to St. Anne's College in Oxford, where she studied English and graduated with highest honors. During this time, Wendy continued to live in the convent instead of the college, maintaining a strict rule of silence. In Sister Wendy completed her teaching diploma in Liverpool and returned to South Africa to teach.
She was eventually appointed a Reverend Mother, a position she held while also lecturing at the University of Witwatersrand. After recurrent bouts of illness, Sister Wendy returned to England in to live a fully contemplative life. Obtaining papal permission for Sister Wendy to become a Consecrated Virgin, Sister Wendy's order arranged for her to live under the protection of the Carmelite nuns at their monastery at Quidenham, Norfolk.
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