Scarlet Ribbons

Scarlet Ribbons is the story of the Rev. Simon Bailey, a priest with AIDS, and the remarkable support he received from his Yorkshire mining village parish. He remained rector of Dinnington until the end: the only priest with AIDS to stay in his parish. In 1995, BBC's Everyman screened Simon's Cross, his story, and received a phenomenal response. In his struggle to make sense of his suffering and approaching death, Simon articulated the suffering of the many: the sick, the bereaved, those trying to come to terms with their homosexuality, other AIDS sufferers and their carers. Simon's sister, journalist Rosemary Bailey, has tried, as he did, to make some sense of his death. Her unsentimental and poignant account is a story for our time.