“St George’s, White’s church in Baghdad, once had a congregation of more than 6,000 and a school, a clinic and a food bank. This great community has been more than decimated by Isis. ‘They killed over 1,000 of my congregation,’ he says. ‘Can you believe that? And now the others have fled, too.’”

Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad, is not, in person, at all as I’d imagined him. His memoir, about life as first a medic, then a cleric, is chock-a-block with famous friends. Pope John Paul II was a pal, the Grand Ayatollah of Baghdad, General David Petraeus. ‘Oh, Andrew knows everyone,’ I was told when I asked anyone about him, and I’m afraid my heart hardened. I arrived in the rain at his house in Liphook, Hampshire, preparing myself for a vain man, full of his own derring-do.

More fool me. Canon White is instantly, unusually lovable. He greets me wearing a sweatshirt with the caption ‘Real men become vicars’. ‘Look!’ he says delightedly. ‘Look at my hoodie!’ We talk for close to two hours about Islam, Isis and evil, and his work as a mediator between the various hate-filled factions of the Middle East. By the time I leave it occurs to me that Canon Andrew White is something of a saint.

It’s not that he’s perfect, but that he’s guileless. He’s pure of heart in the way few people over five ever are. It makes sense that he’s spent two decades as a peace-maker, negotiating with tyrants and psychopaths, because he’s utterly disarming.

We sit in his study, which is arranged like a front room in the Middle East: seats around the walls. And on most of the seats, perched or lounging, is a young person, all employed by White’s foundation (for relief and reconciliation in the Middle East). Throughout our interview they fuss over White, organise him, join in the conversation, which is interrupted from time to time by phone calls from a man called Des who has been given the job of finding for the Canon the perfect red suit-lining.

I say: ‘I gather the Archbishop has recalled you. He’s said it’s not safe for you to stay in Baghdad?’ Canon Andrew nods glumly, but he admits that his friend Justin Welby has a point. They worked together mediating in Nigeria, so the archbishop is not risk-averse. But Isis are now too dangerous. ‘Isis are on the doorstep of Baghdad. Their bombs are going off all the time,’ says White. Not least last Friday, when, before the Paris atrocity, a suicide bomber blew up 18 Shia Muslims. Has he ever been personally threatened? ‘I invited an Isis man to dinner to talk once,’ says White, ‘But he replied -saying that if he came he would chop my head off.’

This sounds crude enough to be a bad joke. It wasn’t. And if White had his head removed he wouldn’t be the first member of his congregation to be assassinated by Isis.

St George’s, White’s church in Baghdad, once had a congregation of more than 6,000 and a school, a clinic and a food bank. This great community has been more than decimated by Isis. ‘They killed over 1,000 of my congregation,’ he says. ‘Can you believe that? And now the others have fled, too.’

‘It’s not just Isis.’ This from a girl who looks 15 but is 27-year-old Dr Sarah Ahmed, sitting in pyjamas on the sofa. She’s White’s right-hand woman, a Muslim, still working in Iraq. She says: ‘The truth is that the congregation came to hear Andrew — Christians and Muslims both — and now he’s left, they’ve gone. There were 46 who came last Sunday. Forty-six!’

Muslims came to an Anglican church? ‘People respect faith in Iraq,’ says Sarah. ‘They can see he is sincere.’

So is it better to be a Christian negotiating with Muslims than to be secular, I ask. I’m always hearing that religion is the problem, not the solution, in Iraq.

‘Yes, absolutely,’ says White. ‘People say it’s important to keep religion out of the peace process in the Middle East, but you can’t have a peace process without religion. You can’t have politics without religion in the Middle East! It’s impossible. Faith is our common ground.’

How on earth do you reconcile factions who think each other literally Satanic? ‘You listen to their stories,’ says Canon White. ‘You get to know each person, love them. Perhaps you can persuade them to hear each other’s stories. That way the conspiracy theories unravel.’

This isn’t just talk. He’s had great success. ‘We signed that declaration up there,’ he points at the wall proudly, ‘That is the Chief Rabbi and Hamas saying, “We will work together and we recognise that the one thing we have in common is the belief in one God.” ’

Here we have a break for Canon White to talk to Des. The red lining is so vital, it turns out, because he is going to Jerusalem and he wants to take it to his tailor there. White is a lifelong Judaeophile and clearly longs to be back in Israel.

You’ve met with Hamas and the PLO in your work as a mediator, I say. You were actually friends with Yasser Arafat. Is that difficult for a lover of Israel?

‘Oh yes,’ says White cheerfully, but adds that it actually causes problems with pro-Israel western Christians, not with Israelis. ‘They say, “How can you deal with evil men? With these evil Muslims?” Well, I don’t like the term evil Muslims. They are no more evil than Christians are. We haven’t got a very good history either, have we?’

Equally, it’s pro-Palestinian Christians, he says, who mind his friendship with Jews.

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