The Revd Andrew Body writes:

FURTHER to your obituary for Bishop John Dennis (Gazette, 26 June) and the comment that he was an ecu­meniac: when he was Bishop of Knaresborough, he went on an ecu­men­­ical pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Soon after he arrived, a Roman Catholic pilgrim said to him, “John, you’re not really a Bishop or a priest, you know.” Typically, John simply accepted what was said. But a week later, when they were propping up a bar somewhere, the same man said: “John, you may not be a bishop or a priest, but by God, you’re a Cath­olic!”

I owe him a great deal. Our parish in Yorkshire was one of the first to admit children to communion, and we were both founder Trustees of FLAME (Family Life and Marriage Education). He used to let me use his house in Cambridge for reading weeks. It was a privilege to have him baptise one of his grandchildren in my last parish in Surrey. He was a deeply spiritual man, with a great sense of humour. When Synod was debating admission to communion, there was concern about how people would know who had been admitted. John relished the aside from Bishop Patrick Rodger (who ordained me): “Simple — we give them a Humble Access Card.”

Jonathan Doering adds: My abid­ing memory of Bishop John Dennis will be his sense of humour. My wife and I had the pleasure of knowing John and his wife, Dorothy, when he was Guest Chaplain at St Mary’s Convent, Freeland, Oxford­shire, where we enjoyed his seem­ingly in­­exhaustible stock of jokes and anecdotes.

Later, he was very supportive of my wife’s vocation as an Anglican priest, offering thoughtful and well-placed advice as she navigated the various processes. After what felt at the time to have been a fairly ardu­ous path to acceptance for ordina­tion training, we saw him again at Freeland. Once we had finished our tale, he smiled, and, with a twinkle, remarked, “Well done! It’s almost enough to make you believe there is a God!”

Geoffrey Duncan writes: I can claim to be one of the few people who had Fr Beau Brandie (Gazette, 12 June) lost for words. When I was a LEA officer in Brighton, I had to attend Beau’s church school to sort out a problem with the school meals. Beau asked to meet at 11.55, which I thought a strange time, but all be­­came clear, when, after five min­utes of the meeting, Beau announced “The Head and I now come to a halt at this time”, and proceeded to say the Angelus. (He admitted later that this was to put me and my colleague in our place.) To his surprise, I was able to give the responses, which left him speechless for a while before we proceeded with the business.

Some years later at the head’s retirement party, which Beau organ­ised as a “This is Your Life”, he graciously recalled how he had been wrong-footed by “that LEA officer”. I also recall that there came a time when Beau’s school was threatened with closure. At a packed consulta­tion meeting, Beau discomfited the representatives of the Authority by declaiming, “Close this school, and blood will flow!” The school was not closed, and Beau actually got a new one built. On another occasion, after a school function in the church, Beau said, “We now adjourn to the annexe. Would you care to join us?” Not knowing what to expect, I went along, only to discover the “annexe” was the pub next door, where a most enjoyable evening ensued.

Tom Spires writes: I met Canon Alan Luff (Gazette, 22 May) when he was Precentor of Manchester Cathedral and I worked at the head office of a large company in the textile business. I was able to attend lunchtime services regularly in those far-off days. I used to visit Bristol frequently then, as my late cousin worked at the university there. He was a Reader at St Michael’s, and I met a Mr Luff who was a church­warden there and Alan’s father.

As a life-long railway fol­lower, I feel that I should point out that the LNER (London and Northern Rail­way) did not operate in Bristol, but it was the much-loved Great Western Railway, the only one to survive the grouping of 1923 and the one attracting loyal service. The loss of Alan to the railway was to the benefit of the Church and Alan’s services to many people over the years. May he now rest in peace.

The Revd Steve Tilley writes: Your obituary of Canon Anthony Meakin (Gazette, 19 June) did not mention his work in compiling A Basic Church Dictionary, first published in 1990 and since reprinted many times. It helped me out of tricky situations as a young curate and is still my go-to reference book on ob­­scure terminology.