As the Archbishop of York leaves his post after nine years, Peter Mullen looks at a new biography of a man who rose from his working class roots to high church office and back again.

David Hope was baptised with Wakefield tap water out of a Yorkshire pudding tin on 14th April 1940, and he has taken something of a battering ever since. This is the Yorkshire lad, son of a builder, who rose to become Archbishop of York and who has resigned that exalted post to spend the rest of his working life as the parish priest of St Margaret's, Ilkley. This pastoral job among the common folk of God is what David Hope likes best.

He was always naturally religious in a down-to-earth way. As Rob Marshall, in his book, Hope The Archbishop, tells us: "While other children would enjoy playing post offices or shops, Hope played churches".

Not that he was ever sanctimonious, in the high church, high camp style which was the routine in some of the places he ministered. In the smells and bells citadel of All Saints, Margaret Street, in the west end of London, he was once rather snootily informed: "The priest doesn't sing hymns in the sanctuary, Father." David replied: "I'll sing in my sanctuary if I want to. You get over there and swing your handbag."

He is a man who can be depended upon to go into places where there is deep trouble and sort it out. In 1974, he was appointed as principal to St Stephen's House, the Church of England theological college in Oxford, which "...was suffering from a culture of moral degeneracy and profound mismanagement. Frankly, the place was Sodom and Gomorrah. Rampant buggery everywhere and nearly everyone sodden with gin".

I have myself heard the place described as "...full of lacenick and old arse". David reformed and restored St Stephen's to become again one of the most respected training establishments for the clergy.

After a spell as Bishop of Wakefield, he was made Bishop of London - the third most senior bishop in the land - in 1991. The greatest advantage he took to this high office was his experience of having worked as a parish priest, as an ordinary vicar. It will perhaps come as a surprise to most people not privy to the inner workings of the church to learn that, in fact, hardly any of the diocesan bishops has much practical parish experience.

The usual path to the purple is a short curacy followed by a staff job, then the mitre. Perhaps one reason why the church is in a parlous state is that so few of the men in charge have the foggiest notion of parish life.

The momentous issue of the ordination of women was to be decided barely a year after David Hope's enthronement in the capital. Personally he was against it. This was not because he believed women were not up to the job, but because he thought that women's ordination to be such a huge doctrinal shift that it required the consent of the universal church: that, in other words, it was not an issue on which the Church of England could act unilaterally.

But in 1992, act unilaterally the church did. Hope did not resign over the decision but stayed on to try to be a focus for what was left of church unity. It should be said that Hope was a lot more charitable towards the feminists than some of them were towards him. And, as Marshall says, "Hope also points out that the advent of women priests has not led to a radical upturn in either attendance or morale".

David Hope is tough, a street-fighter. But he is also a sensitive, humane man who suffers for his principles and who has been made to hurt for his kindness and generosity of spirit. As his biographer says: "There is an obvious danger of loneliness leading to unhappiness. This is something I believe Hope has fought with for some time."

And he adds: "He is health-conscious. Some have suggested that he verges on being a hypochondriac."

He has certainly suffered the slings and arrows of Outrage!'s vile accusations. Peter Tatchell threatened to expose him as a practising homosexual. He is not. And his courageous response to Tatchell's blackmail was to say that he was not prepared to live his life under that particular shadow and to challenge Outrage! "to put up or shut up". The celibate Archbishop famously described his sexuality as "a grey area".

The Archbishop of York is a pillar of the Establishment and holder of one of the highest ranks of public office in the realm. But David has not been cowed into subservience to the New Labour Project.

He thought the Millennium Dome tatty and he said: "The Labour Government has meddled too much in people's lives. It wants to interfere in every detail. There is an element of control-freakery about Labour which will only be realised in the fullness of time when the books are written". And although he had the greatest respect and affection for Princess Diana, he declared bluntly, "There is some element of wallowing in her death."

Whereas the new Archbishop of Canterbury seeks to lay much of the blame for Islamic terrorism at the feet of the western democracies and says that these terrorists feel they have no choice except to go on suicide bombing missions, David Hope speaks unafraid of "...that corrosive evil of resentment and hatred and revenge which becomes the motivating and driving force of the zealot and the fanatic".

This lovely, devout and holy man - the Queen took him suddenly by surprise and knighted him - loves his Yorkshire fish and chips and his nightly glass of white wine, then red wine, then whisky. He is above all at home simply being a priest with his people: preaching and teaching, administering the Blessed Sacrament, taking them on pilgrimages to the Holy Land or just nattering about nowt and summat over a cup of tea in the parish hall.

Rob Marshall has written a fine biography, full of truth and gossip, tears and laughter - not least at the time David met someone outside a West End theatre where they were showing Puppetry of the Penis: "Honestly! - having me standing in that doorway with all those pictures of penises with faces!" I can just hear his open Yorkshire vowels and his mock, self-deprecating indignation.

His life's work has cost him much and he admits it: "It has been at some considerable cost to myself at times, but I don't begrudge that at all. Over the ordination of women and again over the gay issue, which is dividing the church, one has to use one's best efforts to seek to preserve the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace".

Over the centuries, God has shown that he makes his saints in all shapes and sizes, and He is quite as capable of making one out of a plain-speaking Yorkshire lad as out of some exotic Italian in a soutane and a biretta.

There is something of the saint about David Hope. I know the people of St Margaret's, Ilkley will soon get to know this. Everyone of goodwill wishes David happiness as he resumes the proper work of the parish priest - on Ilkla Moor baht mitre.

* Hope the Archbishop: A Portrait by Rob Marshall (Continuum £16.99) .

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.