Alan Brunskill Webster was born in 1918, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Queen’s College, Oxford, and he prepared for ordination at Westcott House, Cambridge.

Though he was attracted to history – in 1954 he published a biography of Joshua Watson, the layman who galvanised and organised much of the revival of Anglican church life after the Napoleonic wars – Webster was too much the restless activist to be content with the academic life. His vocation was to be a clerical and more boldly innovative kind of Watson.

He fulfilled this vocation partly by training other priests. He returned to Cambridge as vice-principal of Westcott House and was an enthusiastic teacher of ordinands at a time when there was considerable confidence that the reconstruction of Church and State would lead to a good future, together with an assurance that graduate priests would be accepted in the vanguard of progress. While he was at Westcott he met and married Margaret Falconer, who was then working for the Student Christian Movement. They formed a very strong partnership, especially in later years when Margaret became one of the leaders of the Movement for the Ordination of Women.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE)

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