A congregation of clergymen

This highly readable selection of obituaries is based on the original more general collections of Hugh Massingberd. His object was to celebrate life rather than death; and indeed the persons here described, though from a specialised category, come vividly alive in the capable hands of Canon Trevor Beeson.

The period covered is the quarter century from 1987 to 2002. Of the 89 entries, 86 are of men, mostly, but not all, Anglican. Highlighted here are facts and events not, in general, mentioned in the actual obituaries, whose dates are given in brackets.

The Rev. Dr Alec Vindler (27 July 1987) was the first person to give a nudge towards Christianity to the former diehard agnostic Malcolm Muggeridge, who described the erstwhile former Dean of King’s, Cambridge, as a ‘sceptic in faith’s clothing’. Vindler would have been amazed, perhaps alarmed, to see the lengths of sub-Augustinian austerity to which Muggeridge went in his eventual (Roman Catholic) brand of belief.