Stuart Blanch, Baron Blanch

Who was Stuart Blanch, Baron Blanch?

Stuart Yarworth Blanch, Baron Blanch, PC was an Anglican priest, bishop and archbishop. Little interested in religion in his youth, he became a committed Christian at the age of 31, while serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

He was ordained as a priest in 1949, and spent three years as a curate and five years as a vicar in and around Oxford where he had studied for the priesthood. He was vice principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford from 1957 to 1960, the founding head of Rochester Theological College from 1960 to 1966, Bishop of Liverpool from 1966 to 1975, and Archbishop of York from 1975 to 1983.

Blanch was evangelical in outlook, but gained the trust of high church Anglicans, and also of Roman Catholics and nonconformists. He was well known as a lecturer and published ten books, most of them scholarly and theological.