Dr Bernard Palmer writes:
MAY I add a footnote to the Very Revd Dr David Edwards’s obituary for the Revd Professor Henry Chadwick (Gazette, 20 June)? It concerns his role as chairman of the Canterbury Press during the firm’s negotiations with me in the late 1980s for the purchase of the Church Times from the Palmer family.
It was in April 1986 that I received, completely out of the blue, a handwritten letter from Dr Chadwick, who was then Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
A friend, he said, had mentioned the possibility (“I hope remote”) that I might want, during the next few years, to dispose of my interest in the paper. “Rumour may be lying”, he tactfully added, “and the association you and your family have with the paper is such that I much hope so.” However, he went on, he hoped I would not take it as an impertinence (“but indeed the contrary”) if, on behalf of the Canterbury Press, he expressed at least a provisional interest in talking with me about the Church Times, should that question be one that I might at any time want to discuss.
Rumour was not, of course, lying, as for some years I had been considering what would happen to the paper when I retired. And that letter, as far as I was concerned, set the tone for what was to follow. Its friendly approach won me over from the start, and endeared me to its writer. Though the detailed negotiations were in the hands of Gordon Knights, the Canterbury Press’s chief executive, Henry Chadwick took a keen interest throughout, and indeed entertained me to lunch at his London club more than once.
He impressed me particularly by his interest in the human element. He shared my own concern for the future welfare of the dozen members of my hot-metal printing staff, who would necessarily be made redundant by the change of ownership, and the introduction of the new printing technology — and sympathised with my efforts to secure them generous financial compensation. In the hard world of business, such a humane attitude came to me as a refreshing change.
The Bishop of Swansea & Brecon writes:
THE Archbishop of Wales rightly mentioned in his obituary of the Rt Revd Anthony Crockett (Gazette, 11 July) how, throughout his battle with cancer, Tony continued his ministry in and to the diocese of Bangor, even from his sickbed.
In August 2007, when I was Dean of Brecon, Tony came to preach in Brecon Cathedral at the annual jazz service during the town’s famous jazz festival. I had invited him for two reasons. First, Tony had a great love of jazz, and had missed only one or two of Brecon’s 25 previous festivals. Second, he had a great love for Brecon Cathedral, and had said that to be its Dean was the only job in the Church in Wales that he had ever coveted.
Although very unwell, he came, and preached an electrifying and moving sermon in a packed Cathedral. Referring to both Dido’s lament, “When I am laid in earth”, from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and a jazz improvisation of the same — I believe by the David Rees-Williams Trio (both pieces were played during the course of the sermon) — Tony spoke of the importance of being willing and brave enough to improvise when things in life failed to go to plan. He, as he told us, had been forced to improvise after his own diagnosis. Many listeners in Wales heard the sermon in an edited form when the service was broadcast.
The faith, courage, and sheer energy with which Tony played out his own improvisation, supported by his wife, his family, and his diocese, is something that I and many others will always admire.
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