IT COULD have been said of the Very Revd Alfred Hounsell Dammers, as it was of Archbishop William Temple, that he showed it was possible to be both very clever and very good. Known as "Horace" since his schooldays at Malvern, for his rubicund countryman’s complexion, he had a happy childhood in Norfolk, clouded only by the early death of his mother. After a year at Pembroke College, Cambridge, reading Classics and playing cricket, and after wrestling with his instinctive pacifism, he joined the Army in 1940 and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery.

It was during the battle of El Alamein, not through failure, but through success in destroying an enemy tank, that he resolved to devote the rest of his life, if spared, to the service of the Prince of Peace. Later, at Monte Cassino, he was wounded by a mine, while going to the aid of a comrade. At the casualty clearing station he found himself lying next to a German pilot, whose family had been killed in a raid on Hamburg: and thus began a ministry of reconciliation which lasted more than half a century.

On returning to Cambridge, he took a good First in Theology, and trained for the ministry at Westcott House. He served his title at Adlington in Lancashire, and a second curacy at Edgbaston, where he also lectured in New Testament at Queen’s College, Birmingham.

His idealism, however, took him away from a conventional academic career to the newly formed Church of South India, as chaplain and lecturer at St John’s College, Palayamkottai, where his experience of a United Church deepened his existing commitment to ecumenism.

There, too, he fell into "the snare of the hunter", the relentless and almost invariably successful pursuit of able staff by the then Bishop of Sheffield, Leslie Hunter (1939-1962); and he served for eight years (1957-1965) as Vicar of Holy Trinity, Millhouses, where collaboration with the local Methodist church had been well established by a former incumbent, Oliver Tomkins, later Bishop of Bristol. These were golden years of pastoral ministry, based on a happy home life with Brenda, whom he had married in 1947, and their four children, and strengthened by a disciplined rhythm of prayer, study, broad reading and incisive writing.

None of his 13 books became a best-seller, but all of them testify to his ability, which also characterised his preaching, to express the truths of the gospel with clarity and conviction. Although he later acquired a reputation as a liberal in matters of peace and social justice, in his theology he was conventional and orthodox. His radicalism was Franciscan in origin, and, indeed, he was a Companion of that Order.

Deeply influenced by the "Biblical Theology" of the day with its rediscovery of the prophetic message of the Old Testament, by his life-long close attention to the Greek New Testament, and by his constant questioning of the meaning of "the things he had suffered", he found himself in tune with many contemporary concerns. These he served best through his ability to turn theory into practice, and to in-carnate ideas in institutions.

It is not surprising, then, that he was recruited to be Director of Studies and Residentiary Canon (1965-1973) of the recently rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, where, with his amiable temperament, devotion to team-work, and dogged determination, he was the perfect complement to the more high-profile Provost, Bill Williams. Coventry had led the way in that extraordinary cultural shift whereby during the last third of the 20th century the English cathedrals moved from ancient to modern; and his time there proved an excellent apprenticeship for his distinguished tenure of the Deanery of Bristol (1973-87).

Here, on to the warp-threads of word and sacrament, service and study, ministry and community, all the weft-threads of his many interests could be interwoven. The Norfolk yachtsman allocated a chapel to Missions to Seafarers; the creator of a Youth Centre in Sheffield developed the care of the aged; the great-grandson of the Adjutant-General to the last King of Hanover strengthened the Meissen link with the Marktkirche there. He established a Peace Chapel, founded the Life-Style Movement, and co-founded One for Christian Renewal and The Ex-Services Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

He campaigned tirelessly against landmines, and gained a welcome ally in the late Princess of Wales. Opposition to these activities; and to changes in the cathedral and its school was inevitable, but none the less painful to so irenic a man. Still, if opponents perceived his quiet persistence as obstinacy, at least none of them ever became an enemy. He was simply impossible to dislike. I never knew anyone in whom were more manifest those gifts of the spirit, against which, St Paul says, there is no law: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control". May he rest in peace.