There was a time when Trevor Beeson was one of the most widely known and appreciated figures in the Church of England, through his writings and journalism probably as much as his ministry, which was mainly served in senior positions at Westminster Abbey and Winchester Cathedral.
Both roles reinforced his promotion of modernisation in the church, in support of ecumenism, women’s ordination and reform of the antiquated administration of many cathedrals, at a time when these were not necessarily high on the Anglican agenda, though he lived to see many of those changes brought about. That he was an able preacher and administrator himself, spearheading a major fundraising effort to raise nearly £7m in two years to shore up Winchester, always in danger of sinking into its marshy foundations, was an added bonus.
Warm and approachable, Beeson, who has died aged 97, had a facility for writing – a skill not given to many clerics – which he deployed in both church and national newspapers. A contributor to the Guardian’s Face to Faith column for many years, he was a broadcaster, and religious adviser to London Weekend Television. In addition he served as the Daily Telegraph’s occasionally waspish anonymous obituarist of senior church figures.
He wrote books on liturgy and worship, and on the church in oppressed parts of the world – the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, and Latin America – diaries of his time at the abbey and the cathedral, and sprightly volumes of vignettes of famous (and occasionally infamous) bishops and deans.
Ralph Inge, the famously gloomy early 20th-century dean of St Paul’s, a frequent contributor to newspaper columns, once wrote that he had ceased to be a pillar of the church and become two columns in the Evening Standard, and Beeson happily emulated him.
Born in Gedling, Nottinghamshire, he was the son of Matilda and Arthur Beeson, a grocer, and left school at the age of 14 to work as a clerk at an accountancy firm, before transferring to serve behind the counter of a National Westminster Bank. He was called up to the RAF in the last year of the second world war and became a weather observer for the airborne meteorological service. On being demobbed he trained for ordination, first at King’s College London and then at St Boniface missionary college at Warminster, Wiltshire.
He was ordained deacon in 1951, and priest in 1952, and served his curacy first at Leadgate in County Durham before becoming priest-in-charge of a church on a housing estate in Stockton-on-Tees for 11 years. Writing trenchantly for the parish magazine, where his talent was first apparent, and then for the reformist Parish and People movement, led to his being appointed editor in 1965 of the New Christian, a fortnightly church magazine along the lines of weeklies such as the New Statesman. It also led to his acquiring a London base as curate at St Martin-in-the-Fields.
In 1971 he was made vicar of Ware in Hertfordshire in the St Albans diocese of his friend Robert Runcie, then the local bishop. Five years there were followed by his appointment as a residentiary canon of Westminster Abbey, subsequently also rector of St Margaret’s, the parish church of the Commons, nestling next to the abbey, and chaplain to the Speaker, George Thomas.
These accumulating posts were accompanied by service as chaplain to St Bride’s, the journalists’ church in Fleet Street, over 17 years from 1967.
At the same time Beeson was writing books including The Church of England in Crisis (1973) – viewed by some as his most important – and Britain Today and Tomorrow (1978), and broadcasting regularly, including presenting the BBC TV interview series The Controversialists (1980) and chairing the SCM religious publishing house. He was even the European religious correspondent for the American Christian Century magazine for 13 years.
While his writing approach was reformist, his liturgical and spiritual approach as a priest was more traditional. He patrolled the abbey and later the cathedral each day in cassock to greet visitors and parishioners, led formal services and was scathing of some evangelical informal services such as the ominous-sounding “messy church”, an attempt to encourage children and their parents to come to church.
In 1987 the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, put his name forward – it was actually formally a royal appointment – to become dean of Winchester, suggesting with an irony that was perhaps lost on her that it would give him more freedom to write. In fact the place was in a disorganised state common to several cathedrals at the time, strangled by ancient statutes and procedures, internal rivalries and enmities, all in financial difficulties and, in Winchester’s case, facing a huge bill for renovation.
Beeson argued for reform while he also spearheaded the successful fundraising appeal whose outcome he described as near miraculous. In his book The Deans (2004) he argued for a more open and consultative appointments process; term limits for cathedral canons; more effective, pastoral episcopal leadership and more professional administration.
Beeson’s writing continued well into his 80s, long after his retirement in 1996 (when he was appointed OBE), though he did get into trouble in publishing his book Window on Westminster (1998), about his time at the abbey, when an anonymous figure mentioned in the book sued for libel and an out-of-court settlement had to be reached. He continued to conduct services into his 90s.
Beeson married Josephine Cope, the daughter of the butcher in their home town of Gedling, in 1950, and the couple had two daughters, Jean and Catherine, who survive him. Josephine died in 1997.
• Trevor Randall Beeson, priest, born 2 March 1926; died 17 October 2023
