Googling for stuff on the Tourneur film STARS IN MY CROWN, I happened upon this...
"Potter did see things under the aspect of eternity. Novelist Julian Barnes described him as "a Christian socialist with a running edge of apocalyptic disgust." Christian, yes, in residue. Though Potter gave ecclesiastics the willies with his God play ("Son of Man") and his Devil play ("Brimstone and Treacle"), he could still recite, as meaningfully as if it were a pop standard, the words to an old hymn that treats death as the door opening on heavenly happiness: "Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown?" Socialist, yes, decrying British mercantilism that turns everyone "from a citizen into a consumer. And politics is a commodity." Apocalyptic disgust? Plenty, even at the end. He told Bragg he had named his pancreatic cancer Rupert, "so I can get close to it. Because that man Murdoch is the one who, if I had the time — I've got too much writing to do, and I haven't got the energy — but I would shoot the bugger if I could."
From a Richard Corliss columnn in Time.