The Chapel

Gareth Banting (1964)

Gareth attended Denstone School before coming up to Selwyn in 1964 to read History. Between 1972 and 1983 he taught history and shooting and introduced politics into the curriculum at Cranleigh, where he also ran the shooting team and was involved in the CCF.

He married Michèle, who taught music at Cranleigh, in 1977 and the following year they had a son, Tim. Gareth moved to Allhallows on the Dorset coast, where he taught history and politics and, again, ran the shooting team. He was there for fifteen years, many of them as a highly respected housemaster, until the school’s closure in 1998, when he retired.

He went on to volunteer as an adviser with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and as an RSPCA home visitor (reflecting his life-long love of his dogs). He then became a eucharistic minister in the Axminster area, taking Holy Communion to residential homes and individuals who were housebound.

Gareth passed away on 5 January 2021.

Emily Banting (Gareth’s daughter-in-law)

Rowland Morgan (1964)

My brother Rowland Morgan, who has died aged seventy-five, was known to many Independent on Sunday and Guardian readers in the 1990s for his remarkable weekly columns, ‘Index’ in the former, ‘Digitations’ in the latter. They were collected in two books, Planet Gauge (London: Fourth Estate, 1992) and Digitations (London: Michael O’Mara Books, 1996). The cover of the second described it, tongue in cheek, as ‘Mindblowing number-crunchings from the cutting edge of eco-paranoia’. His statistics, gathered seemingly at random but well-sourced and themed, drew praise from Kingsley and Martin Amis. They reflected Rowland’s enormous curiosity on controversial subjects from warfare to sex and everything in between. He produced a flood of books of statistics, historical stories and puzzles between 1992 and 2005, at least nine of which were translated into French and another into Estonian. Rowland had a deep pioneering concern about the fate of Planet Earth, which included working for the Green Party for a while.

Rowland was born on 7 July 1945 in Brighton to Tudor and Dylys Morgan, and educated at Brighton College; Selwyn, where he read English and French; and Bangor University (then the University College of North Wales). From there in 1978 he emigrated to Canada with his first wife, but the couple soon parted and Rowland developed his career as a journalist with the Vancouver Sun and as editor of the Georgia Straight independent paper. He met the sculptor Emily Disher and they developed a successful series of ‘Then and Now’ photo volumes about British Columbia, Vancouver, San Francisco, Victoria BC and Seattle, published between 1977 and 1979 under his baptismal name Roland. He added the ‘w’ as a gesture to his Welsh roots.

Rowland and Emily moved to the south of France in 1980 where they married and set about restoring ancient houses in and around Uzès, living in an ancient farmhouse, where they welcomed visitors warmly. There followed more than ten years living in Twickenham and on Eel Pie Island. As well as his journalism and a rich involvement in digital media development, he and Emily ran the World One-Day Novel Cup between 1993 and 1997, which gave first breaks to Jon Ronson, Pat Gray and Maggie Hamand among others.

But Canada’s call was powerful and the couple returned to Vancouver in 2003, now the parents of a daughter, Rosa, and a son, Henry. Rowland turned his attention to the calamity of 9/11, producing two books in collaboration with Ian Henshall, 9/11 Revealed and Flight 93 Revealed (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005 and 2006). The books were shunned by the US media, but they asked pertinent questions which are not easily answered.

Thenceforward Rowland enjoyed life in Cowichan Bay, Vancouver Island, with Emily. At first life was good, especially after he acquired his yacht, Calypso. He became a grandfather of three little ones, whose company delighted him. But his health became fragile and he died on 21 April 2021 after a major heart attack. He is survived by Emily, his children Rosa and Henry, his granddaughter Zara and grandsons Jasper and Sequoia.

Gerald Morgan (SE 1956)

The Reverend Professor Frederick Shriver (1964)

Frederick H Shriver III died on 7 October 2020, the day after the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination as deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the USA (as it was then called).

Fred, as he was universally known – although he was punctilious to correct any such abbreviation in formal modes of address – began training for ordination at the General Theological Seminary (GTS) in New York in 1957. He was ordained by Bishop Wilburn Campbell to serve a curacy at Trinity Church, Morgantown, West Virginia, from 1960 to 1962, where he met and married his beloved Susan, before returning to GTS as a tutor until 1964.

In the summer of 1964 he moved his young family to Cambridge to begin his doctoral studies at Selwyn on the ecclesiastical policy of James VI & I, examining the Puritan and Arminian parties in the seventeenth-century Church of England. Like many American graduates of his generation (Harvard, AB 1954) Fred had served in the Far East and he found Cambridge provincial and its Fellows desiccated, but he made lasting friendships here and in London, and whenever he returned to England, often on sabbatical, he never forgot to visit their former landlady.

After teaching at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee he then moved back to Chelsea (Manhattan), joining the faculty at GTS in 1971. He taught there for twentyseven years until his retirement in 1998. His range of international friendships and passionate acquaintances were on proud display at his farewell party on St George’s Day when T S Eliot’s Four Quartets were performed.

The family lived at the heart of the seminary in Clement Clarke Moore’s Chelsea house where it was said that Professor Moore had written A Visit from St Nicholas;

students, ordinands and faculty were always welcomed there and later at Butterfield House.

From Fred’s penmanship, with his distinctive longhand in black ink, poured letters, notes and the occasional ecclesiastical anathemata. Double-spaced typing furnished article after article. He was never jealous of his own scholarship, sharing his knowledge and discoveries, encouraging others to take them forward to publication. Teaching was always a joint adventure.

He loved life in New York, with its restaurants, museums and, above all, the Lincoln Center, but was always grateful to have a family bolt-hole in Waterford, Maine. He travelled extensively in Italy, as a latter-day Henry James, John Ruskin or Adrian Stokes might, acutely aware of the architecture and art and the incongruities of modern Catholic worship.

In an essay penned thirty-five years ago he celebrated Bishop William Whittingham, fourth bishop of Maryland and one of his GTS predecessors as Professor of Church History, recognising that he found the principles of ‘Liberal Catholicism’ in the writings of James VI & I, Isaac Casaubon and Lancelot Andrewes. He concluded: ‘the significance of non-papal, non-Roman Catholicism is as great as ever and its continuance as necessary – since Vatican II, the formation of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and the pontificate of John Paul II’. That encomium guided FHS as a faithful priest, teacher and pastor.

Dr Nicholas W S Cranfield FSA (SE 1992)

Robert Shannon (1967)

Bob was born in 1948 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. During A-levels at Heaton Grammar School he was encouraged to apply to Cambridge and, to his surprise, was accepted by Selwyn to read Law. A career in the law sounded well-paid and respectable. During his gap year, he worked briefly in a Newcastle solicitors’ office, before volunteering at a hostel for alcoholics in London. This experience gave him a lasting empathy for those on the edges of society.

Coming up to Selwyn in 1967, Bob soon fell in with several other grammar school boys, who would remain close friends for life. Having rowed at school, he enjoyed the camaraderie of Selwyn College Boat Club, eventually rowing in the First Boat. Two oars marking Selwyn Bumps victories still hang in his home. In his second year, Bob showed little enthusiasm for Law and was always grateful that his tutor, Paul Fairest, allowed him to switch to English, which required an extra year. He flourished under supervisors such as Wilbur Saunders and Howard Jacobson. This affirmed a life-long love of language and the arts.

In the 1968 long vacation he worked at a summer camp in the USA, where he met Susan and, impressed by her knowledge of Hadrian’s Wall, promised to write. The US made two permanent changes to his life – growing a beard and gaining a wife. Susan and Bob married at Easter 1971, just before his final exams.

After completing a teaching qualification, he taught English at comprehensive schools in Ely and Rochdale. In 1979, when their daughter Elizabeth was born, he spent a short period as a stay-at-home father, to concentrate on his writing. Although several pieces were broadcast on BBC Radio 4, with a growing family to support he decided to employ his writing talents in marketing and design for Portakabin in York. Following the birth of a son, Jonathan, in 1982, the family moved to Hampshire where Bob worked for IBM and later The Frameworks before becoming self-employed. He was highly regarded, not only for his skill with words, but for his original ideas and readiness to express honest opinions.

Bob always had a passionate interest in the arts and culture. Spare time was filled with reading books, visiting galleries and museums, attending theatres and concerts. He was often seen behind a copy of The Guardian, listening to a Bob Dylan CD. His famous ‘Christmas Rants’ – mailed with cards – about the state of the world were full of scathing humour.

In 2014 he was diagnosed with bowel cancer, but recovered, following surgery and chemotherapy. This reprieve led to a hugely creative period. He took great pride in his collaborations with the Northumberland Theatre Company. In 2018 this culminated in Heartspur, a full-length musical paying homage to his Newcastle roots. His creativity was given new impetus with the arrival of two grandchildren, for whom he wrote and illustrated stories and poems.

Bob died very unexpectedly, following cardiac arrest in December 2020 while recovering in hospital from cancer surgery. His wit, intelligence, generosity and quirky take on life will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

Susan Shannon (Bob’s widow)

Michael Willmott (1968)

Mike, or Micky, Willmott matriculated at Selwyn in 1968 to read English. He was born in Loders in west Dorset in 1949, one of seven children, and came to Selwyn via Salisbury Cathedral School and Haileybury. He spent the six months prior to matriculation with Voluntary Service Overseas as an English teacher on Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. After his BA he stayed at Selwyn for his PGCE, having married Patsy Willmott in Selwyn Chapel in 1972. He then taught English and drama at Watford Grammar School, Adams Grammar School in Wem, and Highfields Comprehensive in Wolverhampton, where he was head of department. He and Patsy had three children, Jo, Tom and Robin.

After leaving teaching he went freelance, setting up his own publishing company, Shrewsbury Words. Here perhaps his greatest achievement was editing and publishing, in three volumes, extracts from the Parish Notes, Loders, Dottery and Askerswell, Dorset, 1948-1982, written by his vicar father.

Settled in Shrewsbury, Mike made a wide circle of friends, playing his violin, tending his allotment, chiming the bells and singing in the choir at Shrewsbury Abbey, organising poetry readings at places such as the Wightman Theatre and Loton Park country house, and ‘chattering’ about literature and politics with all and sundry in local hostelries. PART FIVE