My man of the year: the Archbishop of Canterbury

My man of the year is definitely Albus Dumbledore, the highly-principled Headmaster of Hogwarts School of wizardry and witchcraft, who - if his creator is to be believed - is gay.

I'm sorry, that was a mistake. When I said 'Albus Dumbledore', I meant 'Rowan Williams'; and when I wrote 'Headmaster of Hogwarts' I should've typed 'Archbishop of Canterbury'. Moreover, by 'gay', I of course meant to imply - in the best Anglican tradition - 'happily married with two lovely children'.

However, one constant between the two - besides their being bearded dress-wearers - is that although Dumbledore is a fictional character while Dr Williams is very much flesh and blood, both have 'creators'.

Of course, we're in no position to know whether Dumbledore knows that he was invented by JK Rowling - although such metaphysical speculations would doubtless gladden the heart of the most abstruse medieval scholastic - but we can be certain that Dr Williams believes himself to have been created by another hugely popular author, one he refers to by the nom de plume 'God'.

Or so Dr Williams claims. Actually, I take a close interest in the Archbishop of Canterbury and all his pronouncements, and I do truly believe that 2008 has been a good year for him.

Archbishop Williams shows absolutely no regard for his power base

As his friend AN Wilson has pointed out: perhaps only Dr Williams could have held the Anglican communion together during the Lambeth Conference, while African bigots and American liberals attempted to tear it asunder.

That he managed this, in part, by not speaking his mind on certain key issues, is a tribute to his rejection of 'me-me-me' school of public posturing.

Just as commendably media-unfriendy were the archbishop's nuanced comments on the role of sharia law in British society, while his recent remarks on the possible desirability of the Church's disestablishment show a man with absolutely no regard for his power base whatsoever, so, one thing's for sure: Williams is no politician.

As to his interventions on the looming recession, Dr Williams's much repeated observation that the PM's application of fiscal stimulus is like "giving a drug addict more drugs", has been misinterpreted quite as much as anything he has said about Islam.

This was not another drag on the old Keysianism/monetarism saw horse, but appeal that went to the core of things,