IN THE 1950s, Ken (Kenneth Vincent) Povey was one of my pupils
at Holsby in Cheshire, where I taught English. He was the finest schoolboy
comic actor I ever knew. I remember his Falstaff, Sir Toby Belch, Tony Lumpkin,
and Crichton in The Admirable Crichton, to this day.
We had a job persuading him to play Falstaff, as the language he had to use
was in fact too robust for one who was already a committed Christian.
He was already torn between a future in the pulpit or one on the stage. He
was not very academic. He had to play the part, since Henry IV was an
A-level text, and he had to pass in the subject. He did, just, purely on
Henry IV and Jane Austen, for whom he had a great passion.
Then he went to King's, London, for an AKC, and St Boniface's, Warminster,
for ordination training. He served his title at St Mary's, The Boltons, in
Kensington - rather grand for a country lad. I thought it a mistake. How wrong
I was: they loved him.
Churches where he served as a parish priest included Blacon (Holy Trinity
without the Walls, Chester), and Gawsworth: his loyalty to Chester diocese was
paramount. In between, he also spent five years as Chaplain in Copenhagen and
Aarhus.
A lifelong diabetic, he nearly lost his sight, which made ministry in some
years difficult. To the end, he maintained, in a very practical way, the link
between Church and drama. To quote The Times: "A greatly loved man of
God".