Reverend Richard Coles on life in Sussex, politics and his new book

Richard moved to the county after the death of his husband David and now has a home near the village of Friston.

As he promotes his new crime novel, A Death In The Parish, he spoke about his new life and new relationship.

“The big personal news is that I’ve met someone and am now in a relationship, which is lovely. We met just before Christmas – it was my first go on a dating app and it’s worked very well,” said Richard.

His partner is actor Richard Cant, son of the late actor and children’s TV presenter Brian Cant.

The reverend said: “He’s lovely, he’s kind, funny, thoughtful, interesting – and he likes me.”

They haven’t moved in together yet, but Richard, 61, said: “If you’re dating in your golden years, you don’t exactly cut to the chase. You’re not looking for a roller-coaster – you tend to be looking for a smooth limousine so things are sort of steady and nice, which I like.

“We walk and we talk, we sing songs around the piano and I help him learn his lines, which I really enjoy – although at times he gets me to stop because I’m enjoying it a little too much.”

Richard wrote about the loss of his husband David, a former vicar who died from alcohol addiction in 2019, in his bestseller The Madness Of Grief. At the time, he couldn’t see a romantic future with anyone else.

The Reverend Richard Coles now lives in Friston (Image: PA)

“After David died, I went into a sort of hibernation without realising it, ” he said.

“The new relationship has opened up a chunk of life to me that I thought had closed down for good, so that’s lovely. I do feel a new happiness is beginning to blossom in my life, which I didn’t expect or anticipate.”

For now, he shares his home with his two dachshunds, Daisy and Pongo. David used to breed them, he said.

His latest novel follows the success of Murder Before Evensong and is the second in the Canon Clement series set in a sleepy village in the late 1980s. It sees the parish of Champton joined by two neighbouring parishes and their associate vicar, an evangelical churchman keen to put his stamp on the place.

When a wayward teenager is found with his throat slashed in an abandoned chapel, in what initially seems like a ritualistic killing, Canon Daniel Clement, rector of Champton, sets out to solve the mystery, surrounded by a clutch of familiar characters.

Richard was keen to explore the disagreements between church figures who adopt an evangelical approach compared with those who take the middle ground.

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“I’ve seen people fight battles as bitter as ever I’ve known, over such matters as to what you should call Holy Communion, or what you should wear if you’re leading a funeral," he said.

“I’m also interested in how people who are signed up to a professional life and a set of beliefs which requires you to be mild and generous to your enemies, just how very quickly that can break down."

Since leaving the parish of Finedon in Northamptonshire, Richard has "virtually retired" from being a vicar although he still has permission to officiate when required.

He left Radio 4’s Saturday Live after 12 years, because the show relocated to Cardiff from London and said he found it odd that the station’s announcement of his departure came so late – five days before his final show.

The Reverend Richard Coles lived in Northamptonshire (Image: PA)

“I was away in India and was expecting there to be an announcement, and it didn’t come, so I thought, ‘I’ll have to say something’, because I didn’t want listeners to think I’d deserted them," he said.

He has also been outspoken on various church matters and recently made headlines when he described the government’s immigration crackdown as "morally indefensible" on Question Time.

He said: “We’ve got a government that’s very tired. It’s been in power for too long and run out of steam and we all want a change. So much of what I care about and what I need is crumbling around us. The institutions that have given shape to my life – the Church of England, the BBC – feel very stressed, the roads are knackered, the seas are filthy, the trains don’t work.

“Another factor of that is how we treat people. I think because people are rushing to come up with solutions to what they think is a crisis in migration, they start treating people with less than the full dignity they deserve as human beings. I want to resist that.”