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David Newell Allen was the oldest child of Frank and Frances Allen. They lived in Quarndon near Derby. Frank was an engineer with Rolls-Royce and Frances was a nurse.

David was born in Derby on 15 July 1937. Later siblings were Rosemary and me. When David went to school he proved to be a very disruptive child, such as when sent to stand in the corner he decided to remove the wall paper.  Many years later we in the family realised that he had a mild undiagnosed autistic condition. Autism was unlikely to be recognised during David’s early years. Like many autistic people, he was very intelligent, but viewed the world differently to others, yet had a brilliant clarity of thought for things others didn’t see.

At age 8 he went to King’s college prep school, Cambridge. David was of course disruptive, but even then he was able to separate the Headmaster’s punishments from appreciation for the head’s genuine concern for  his pupils. David’s capacity for lifelong friendships began at Kings. He became deeply interested in music, and developed his passion for the music of J S Bach. Only a month ago he was recalling to me the exact date and circumstances when (still at Kings) he first heard the Bach Mass in B minor. He always had a prodigious memory. He became a good pianist and organist, and sang in choirs. Another developing passion was steam railways.

His next school was Framlingham college in Suffolk. Naturally David indulged in eccentric activities; at least once he hitch-hiked to Cambridge and back on a Sunday so that he could attend evensong in King’s College chapel.

David enjoyed making things – marmalade until very recently. He started winemaking at home in Derby. His first brew was elderberry wine. He did not get the technique quite right. My mother came home one day to discover that the ceiling of the kitchen was a rich dark purple.

In 1956 National Service was still in operation, and David was conscripted. He chose to go to the Intelligence Corps, and went to Hong Kong. On the voyage out he helped some illiterate soldiers by reading out and writing letters for them. In Hong Kong he could use his ability to see through pomposity and verbiage to underlying deceptions, scheming and falsehoods. He saw lots wrong with his unit of the Intelligence Corps, and he duly parted from them to join the Lincolnshire Regiment on active service in Malaya. They were in the jungle fighting communist rebels. What gave him most pleasure was coaching other National Servicemen for civilian careers. He was always gentle and he was very proud that he never fired his rifle in action (though he had qualified as a marksman). He felt shame to be described as an active service veteran, when in his view his service had been nothing like as nasty and dangerous as those who had served eg in the trenches in WW1. When he left the army he was given a testimonial that said he was ‘a quiet and likeable man, with above average intelligence. He has worked hard and proved himself a willing member of his platoon. He is exceptionally well behaved’. Some change from his first school!

After National Service, David went up to St Johns College Durham to read for a Durham General Arts degree. He soon found St Johns, an evangelical college, did not suit him at all, and he disagreed with their theological views. He left Durham for Wells theological college. He survived the initiation there whereby senior students took the freshers to a pub where local rough cider was on tap and the typical fresher thought it was no stronger than beer. He passed the General Ordination exam in 1965.

He was ordained deacon in Bradford Cathedral, and went to a parish in Bradford. He soon found that the vicar had different and incompatible ways to his own and that was the end of parish work for him in England, I believe to his lasting regret. However, he retained the strong thread that ran throughout his life of his faith, his spirituality, a deep and contemplative regard for the meaning of life and of God.

He attached himself loosely to Derby Cathedral. He admired the organist, George Heath-Gracie. He did some pastoral work for the cathedral, particularly in hospitals.

David obtained a teaching qualification, and taught at some schools for a few years. One such was the Red House prep school near here. The Marygate car park over the road was the site of one of David’s memorable feats. He borrowed a Morris Minor from someone at Red House to come into York. He parked across the way. When he finished in York, he went back to the car park, unlocked the Minor, started up and went back to Red House. When there he realised the car was not the one he had borrowed, and that he had inadvertently stolen someone’s car.

In the early 70s David decided to go to North America. He got himself a working passage in a fishing boat to Newfoundland. He was commissioned by the Archbishop of Newfoundland to do parish work there. He enjoyed being in Newfoundland, but left to take up a place reading theology at the university of Manchester in 1976.

David had a good relationship with his Professor, Richard Hanson, and had 3 enjoyable years at Manchester, where he made some enduring friends. He graduated with a BA in theology in 1979.

Canada beckoned him again. He received an invitation through contacts to go to North Labrador to work as a Moravian missionary at Nain. He enjoyed his work there and developed a deep interest in Labrador and the work there of the naturalist and botanist Sir Joseph Banks. Years later he could be found in the library of the Royal Society researching Bank’s papers. Whilst at Nain the local Inuit showed David how to build an igloo. Later further south in Labrador he, from temperate Derby, taught town-dwelling Inuit this skill.

A typical David event occurred when he had finished in Labrador. He decided to visit an Anglican foundation in the USA, and his mode of transport was a bicycle. Somewhere in Maine, at night in the pouring rain, one of his tyres was punctured. Whilst he was struggling with this, a car drew up. It was a British Hillman car of the same type our parents had. The female American driver offered help, and the bicycle was put on the car and they went to her home. She offered him accommodation, and they formed an enduring friendship.

In 1996 David moved to the house in York where he lived until his death. He had a wide network of long term friends, whom he visited on an annual peregrination. He built a library of serious historical, spiritual, religious and philosophical – and railway – books. He loved the work of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien and TS Eliot. He had some fiction (Hardy and Trollope|) and all the novels of Dostoevsky, naturally along with the commentary by his friend Rowan Williams. He was deeply interested in Orthodoxy, and belonged to the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius. He had a good sense of humour and was wary of serious pontification. Once he read out to me a passage from a civil war book saying that when Cromwell and the Puritans took power, a wave of seriousness swept across England. He looked up and said ‘Oh no’. He maintained interest in the modern world, read the Guardian and the New Statesman, though any view he expressed would go back for origins at least 100 years. Surprisingly, he was able to discuss lady’s fashion with niece Daisy. He was a keen reader of the Resurgence and Ecologist magazine. He recently expressed interest in going on a course run by the neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist. He gave money regularly to Crisis for homelessness and to cancer research. I saw that when he went to a supermarket he always contributed to the food bank. He loved family, particularly his nephew Alexander and Daisy. When they were young they loved pulling his beard and playing with him and his giant shoes. Recently he got his own back by pulling Alexander’s beard. He was very interested in people and always asked about them and their families. He was always kind. In the last few years we visited as much as we could. Last year he broke his hip, and never properly recovered. Last Christmas, Daisy and I were able to take him out to Bettys, where at his request they gave him an item from their summer menu – an ice cream sundae. There were more frequent visits to hospital, and each time we noticed a reduction in his physical condition. The end came peacefully on the 4^th of August. David was very special and much loved; he will be greatly missed and long remembered.