Revd. Anthony William Davies, 1929-97
Tony Davies died suddenly of a heart attack on 23rd April whilst on holiday in Australia. Educated at Marlborough and St John's College, Oxford, Tony trained as a teacher at Oxford and with the CMS. Under the auspices of CMS, he went in 1954 to St Andrew's College, Oyo, Nigeria. He stayed for over ten years becoming the acting Principal. On his return to the UK, he was Head of History at Stourport-on-Severn Secondary School before moving to Culham College in 1967.
Given his qualities of gentleness, patience and wisdom, it came as no surprise when he decided to embark on a second vocation as a priest. After training and a curacy in Somerset, he spent his last years, until his retirement in November 1996, in four parishes between Oxford and Banbury, where he soon became Rural Dean of Woodstock.
Barbara Gwynne Manwell
Members of the Society will be sad to hear of the death, on 19 July 1997, of Barbara Manwell. She had reached an extremely energetic 83. In the last few years, she went from North Wales to Society events in other counties, to several Lambeth lectures, and most memorably to the last Oxford International Tyndale Conference, where her presence in Hertford College delighted us all.
She was born on 27 March 1914 in Uganda — her parents were with the Church Missionary Society — under the care of Dr (later Sir Albert) Cook, who discovered the organism which causes relapsing fever. After working for a while in the Royal Household, Barbara married Liam Manwell in 1938: he was a pioneer doctor with the CMS, she was then with the Gordon Memorial Mission. At Ler in Southern Sudan, her husband (unknown to him, backed up by Barbara with a second gun) faced and shot a most dangerous, and huge, man-eating lion which was terrorising the neighbourhood: the skeleton of the thorax, she said, strongly resembled an African bee-hive, adding point to the story of Samson. They worked together in Sudan throughout the war; on one occasion they were ambushed by bandits. Liam, though wounded, ran furiously at them and they ran away. After the war they stayed on. In 1950 when their daughter Carol was four, they made an epic journey on rough roads in a not-perfect 1939 Standard 9 from the Sudan to Cape Town.
Members of my family had only just come to know her well. She was born a Daniell — her father and my grandfather were brothers.
My son Chris spent a memorable day with her in Dyserth in N.Wales, where she lived an active life. The last time I met her, at the Oxford Conference, she suggested at the open session that as the much-loved Christmas readings were his, there should be a short BBC radio programme, 'Tyndale's Christmas'. This is happening next Christmas (see page 60), and it will make a tribute to her love of Tyndale's Scriptures, and her imaginative energy. We all miss her, and extend our sympathy to her daughter.
David Daniell