Alan was a gift to Hampstead a gift always beautifully wrapped and never less than elegant. He was himself endowed with many gifts, gifts which he used prodigiously throughout his life and exercised with generosity, delight and charm. Alan had been given the most precious gift of family life and love with Rosemary, their children and grandchildren as Catherine has told us.
But underlying everything was that pearl of great price’ – the gift of faith. For Alan had a profound Christian faith of which he spoke with great eloquence in his preaching and teaching both here in this Church and elsewhere.
And if Alan was a gift to Hampstead, I believe it fair to say that Hampstead was something of a gift to him for it was here he courted Rosemary, canoodling (as he described it) in this very churchyard, and later marrying just up the road at Christ Church. They returned here in retirement, and Hampstead provided for a full and rich life based in Gardnor Mansions at the head of Church Row.
Yet it was not always so. For Alan always acknowledged that he came from very modest beginnings. As a young boy he had known great loneliness. His lack of confidence and loneliness increased during the war when he was evacuated and far from happy. It was a loneliness that was to return after Rosemary’s death and remained despite the love and affection he knew from so many around him. His enjoyment of pomp and ceremony could slide over into pompousness on occasions yet underneath it all there was a very vulnerable human being. It was this background that provided the spur and determination to succeed in life and succeed he certainly did.
From Grammar School Alan went to Trinity College Cambridge where he made a number of friends who were to remain throughout his life. It was in Cambridge, reading French and German, that he met Rosemary, a scholar at Newnham. He proposed to her during a May Ball in 1947 wisely she turned him down. After National Service he entered the Foreign Office and began his career in the Middle East acquiring a good knowledge of Arabic and Islam. He met up once more with Rosemary and this time she agreed to marry him which she did in 1956 at Christ Church here in Hampstead. They began life together in Lisbon where Eleanor, John and Catherine were born. It was here too that he first obtained a licence as a Lay Reader in the Anglican Church.
Back to the Middle East, to Bonn, and then to Kuwait, before returning to London and the Foreign Office. Up to now his career had been, as one of his colleagues described it, OK but not more than OK’
Then came the red trousers. It is unlikely that those involved in the Cyprus Crisis of 1974 especially the Greek Colonels would have known that Alan even had a pair of red trousers. It need not surprise us, recalling his dress sense that could hardly be described as restrained or discreet. But apparently the weekend that the crisis blew up, Alan was at home in a pair of red trousers. Summoned into the office he went in dressed informally, and that sense of being off-duty allowed his more flamboyant and clever side to emerge. Whether it was the red trousers, or his handling of the issues concerned, or perhaps both something caught the eye of Jim Callaghan the Foreign Secretary, and set Alan on a new path. He had found that he made a greater impression in his natural self than when trying to conform. It was something he never forgot he became a true non- conformist.
This growing confidence undoubtedly enriched by the partnership that Rosemary provided throughout their marriage was to lead him via Rome eventually to Dublin as HM Ambassador.
His courage, in going there not many years after his friend and predecessor Christopher Ewart-Biggs had been killed by a terrorist bomb, was significant. Despite the tension under which they had to live, his time in Ireland was a success partly because Alan enjoyed the Irish people, and partly because Rosemary was such a marvellous hostess. It was during his time in Dublin that the important Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed. Alan had forged a close relationship with Garrett Fitzgerald which grew into a friendship based on, among other things, a shared interest in theology.
In 1986 he retired from the Diplomatic Service having been awarded the KCMG the previous year to add to his earlier CMG and CVO. He and Rosemary were to begin a new life once more here in Hampstead. Alan took on the post of Director of the Wates Foundation which he did for over four years. Meanwhile they both immersed themselves in local life much of which centred around this Parish Church. There was music, opera, poetry and drama and over the years Alan’s dramatic performances were many. I recall in particular his Duchess in Alice what a piece of casting and that cameo role of a waiter in Racing Demons a tiny role that somehow filled the stage: Alan was no stranger to the Art of Coarse Acting. There were many other roles of greater distinction. But there was one final role which he never got to play. Eleanor told me that the day after his fall there was to have been a family party, a fancy dress party on the theme of Rock and Roll. Alan’s costume, hired in preparation, was found in his flat he was going as a Teddy Boy our imagination must do the rest!
In 1987 I invited him to join the staff here as Lay Reader. He proudly brought me the evidence of his past performances I think it was fifteen licences from many different countries. But here in Hampstead he shared in leading our worship, and preached powerful and provocative sermons occasionally attracting the interest of the press. Twice he was a finalist in Preacher of the Year awards. His sermons were, as you might expect, polished works, thoughtful and well-presented. He decided to undertake further Theological studies at King’s College London, completing a Master’s Degree in Systematic Theology in 1998. Of course his preaching always struck me as having something of the naughty young curate about it liking to shock with new-found knowledge. This was partly true, but there was much more to it that just that. Alan was passionate in his conviction that God was larger than our human pictures allowed, that God was more loving than our human attempts could model, and perhaps above all, that God was deeply uninterested in so much of the silliness that has obsessed the church in different ways throughout the ages. He believed God to be bored by the peccadillos that obsess us; he believed St Paul and St Augustine were not always helpful; he was critical of parts of the Church today. Impatient with nonsense, he abhorred religious nonsense.
High church in temperament, liberal in theology, convinced of God’s presence, Alan witnessed to the truth of Jesus Christ fearlessly and faithfully. He could be outrageous, and he could be most courteous. In a sermon a few years ago he said: Since I have been privileged to travel a great deal, I have seen the Christian religion in many different manifestations in the world, from the crassest superstition to the most refined liturgy. The differences are not all that great, particularly when Christians come together to celebrate the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus.
For his faith was far from just intellectual he was himself a deeply emotional figure as many will recall especially allowing his emotion to be seen and heard whenever he spoke of Rosemary.
For her death in 1994 had been a severe blow to him. Its suddenness and untimeliness were hard. In one sense he never got over it. In November 1995 we dedicated the glass doors at the back of the church in memory of Rosemary who had herself taken up glass engraving. He wrote to me after that service:
“I have now done all I can to keep Rosemary’s memory alive, though nothing can relieve my grief.”
Rosemary had protected Alan from many things but most of all she protected him from himself. He was aware of that. He gave the address at her funeral, quoting the words of a close friend of theirs who said: She was even cleverer than you, Alan.’ Although he was blessed with a remarkably full and rich life in the subsequent years, being a generous host or an excellent guest, nevertheless at heart he just wanted to be with Rosemary once more.
In that sense although his death has come as a shock to us all and especially of course to his dear family nevertheless he was always ready to go. He would say that his time in Ireland had prepared him for death. This service today was in large part chosen by Alan himself. And some of you can recall his annoyance when Mozart’s Trio from Cossi fan tutte was sung at Gerald Brown’s funeral here a while ago: he feared everyone would think he was copying Gerald!
Spiritually and emotionally ready and waiting for death, the accident that took his life was perhaps for him a blessing. He would have hated being confined as an invalid he would probably have been unbearable.
In true Hampstead fashion he followed John Keats whose Ode on a Grecian Urn reflects upon the delight of anticipation in the two lovers immortalised on the urn in the moment before their lips touch. It was on the way in to The Globe Theatre, eager with anticipation, that Alan was to fall and never regain consciousness. We thank God today for a life a very human life which was touched with the things of eternity. For it was that profound belief in love at the heart of all creation that led Alan onwards. His theology, his faith and the manner in which he tried to live are all summed up in those words from the First Letter of John read to us by Alan’s son, John. Beloved let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God………There is no fear in love… perfect love casts out fear.
It was that love displayed most clearly in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that demanded Alan’s loyalty. It was that love he saw expressed and shared in this sacrament of the Eucharist which lay at the very centre of Alan’s devotions. So it is in this Eucharist that we give thanks; it is in this Church that we remember; it is in the love that he has shared with us all that we commend him in confidence to Almighty God his Creator and Redeemer.
In my Father’s house are many rooms said Jesus in our Gospel reading. Alan was certain of that. God’s love has room for us all.