{"id":31245,"date":"2026-09-20T09:03:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=31245"},"modified":"2026-09-20T09:03:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:03:55","slug":"david-winter-obituaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=31245","title":{"rendered":"David Winter – obituaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reproduced from (\u00a9) The Church Times<\/a><\/h1>\n

Conversations were warm, unhurried, and rich with insight. He was the very best kind of mentor\u2019 Canon Angela Tilby writes in the Church Times\u2026.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CANON David Winter, who died on 23 August, was a prolific Christian writer, editor, radio producer, senior BBC manager, Reader, and, after he left broadcasting, parish priest. Cheerful and modest to work with, he was both politically adept and pastorally sensitive. Yet he once wrote that, in spite of his high BBC<\/a> ranking as Head of Religious Broadcasting, it was only when he entered parish ministry that he felt he was doing a \u201creal\u201d job.<\/p>\n

David was born in 1929 in north London. During the war, he was evacuated to Wales, where he became fluent in Welsh, his grandmother\u2019s native language. He did National Service as a nursing assistant and read English at King\u2019s College, London, where he experienced the Christian conversion that would shape the rest of his life.<\/p>\n

After some years of teaching, he went into journalism and eventually became editor of the glossy Evangelical magazine Crusade. <\/em>Under his leadership, the paper flourished. He came to know Cliff Richard and encouraged his conversion, remaining a mentor and friend, touring with him along with the Settlers and Cindy Kent, and sometimes helping with song lyrics. He and Cliff sometimes even attended church together, and he was the natural choice to write a celebrity biography, New Singer: New Song<\/em>, published in 1967, which covered Cliff\u2019s story into the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

David, throughout his career, continued to write popular books on the Christian faith, which sold well. They included Making Sense of the Bible, Hereafter: What happens after death?, <\/em>and his autobiography, Winter\u2019s Tale <\/em>(2001).<\/p>\n

David joined the BBC in 1971 as editor of the recently introduced Sunday <\/em>programme. His journalistic instinct and wide-ranging curiosity helped to secure a lasting future for that series on Radio 4. It was around this time that I met him. Fresh from reading theology at Cambridge, I took on a temporary research assistant\u2019s post on Sunday. <\/em>David was a skilful mentor, well able to challenge gently any intellectual pretensions on my part. Later, we collaborated on a series with Sir John Betjeman on English hymns, Sweet Songs of Zion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

David was instinctively a populist and represented a different constituency from the more typical public-school and Oxbridge-type colleagues to be found in BBC radio production at that time. He was aware of this and used it to his advantage. His contacts in the Evangelical world stood him in good stead, and he ensured wide-ranging coverage of Billy Graham\u2019s 1989 London Crusade, besides continuing to support Cliff Richard in his Christian life. As the Head of Religious Broadcasting, David\u2019s knowledge, discretion, and boundless good humour commanded respect, loyalty, and affection.<\/p>\n

David had wondered for many years whether he might be called to ordination. Before I worked with him, I had heard him preach as a Reader at St Paul\u2019s, Finchley, where he was much in demand locally. In 1985, he joined the part-time ordination course at Oak Hill. I remember him saying that he found it amusing to be writing essays for credits when he had by this time written several full-length books on Christian topics.<\/p>\n

His years as parish priest of St Bartholomew\u2019s, Ducklington, in Oxford diocese, were deeply fulfilling. He wrote of his 11 years as a parish priest as the happiest and most fulfilling of his life. His last memoir, At the End of the Day: Enjoying life in the departure lounge <\/em>(2013), is full of humour, good sense, keen observation, and a deep love of the scriptures that inspired and upheld him, and which he passed on to others \u2014 faithfully, for so many years, through the written and spoken word.<\/p>\n

Sarah Meyrick, Editor of the <\/em><\/strong>Church Times<\/strong>, adds: <\/em>Longstanding readers will remember David\u2019s frequent contributions to this paper, as a regular diarist \u2014 for an extraordinary 28 years \u2014 from the 1990s until December 2019, when he finally hung up that particular hat. He wrote occasional articles on a wide range of subjects, and was often assigned many a book to review. He was a reliable contributor of always thoughtful and lively content (qualities to gladden the heart of any editor).<\/p>\n

I also worked with David in the diocese of Oxford, when, in retirement, he was a member of the committee responsible for overseeing the diocese\u2019s media relations, and I was diocesan director of communications. An unassuming man, he wore his significant experience at the BBC lightly, and provided a great deal of quiet encouragement and support for trying out new ideas and approaches. Conversations were warm, unhurried, and rich with insight. He was the very best kind of mentor.<\/p>\n

The Revd Michael Page adds<\/em><\/strong>: <\/em>I first met David 60 years ago as a new teenage convert to Christianity, wondering where my life would take me. David came from a neighbouring parish to give a talk at my church in north London. He spoke about his life as a writer and magazine editor, and the thrust of his message was that the media required people who could interpret life through the prism of their own Christian faith. As this was something that interested me, I spoke to him afterwards, and he encouraged me to pursue the interest.<\/p>\n

The encouragement was more than verbal as, over the next few years, he started to use my photography and writing in Crusade<\/em>, besides recommending me to other publications, and engaged me for radio reporting on Sunday<\/em>. When I wanted to work full-time for the BBC, he volunteered himself as a referee, and this, I am sure, was a significant factor in my appointment. Later on, when the then Bishop Mervyn Stockwood was looking for a press secretary in Southwark, he turned to David to ask if he knew of anyone. David suggested me. I spent a happy few years working part-time for Bishop Mervyn and then his successor, Ronald Bowlby.<\/p>\n

David was a prolific writer; I always found his books eminently readable, and a number significantly broadened my understanding of the gospel. At the BBC, he pushed the boundaries of religious programming on both radio and television. I always listened to his contributions on Thought For The Day<\/em> for their pearls of wisdom. As time went on, our contacts grew less frequent, but when we did bump into each other he always remembered who I was and was interested in how things were going for me. I know that I am not the only one who benefited from David\u2019s intellect and his encouragement. At the age of 96, his body had run its course, but I have no doubt that his work will live on, helping others to understand or explain the gospel. He was a very special man: a life well lived, and a good and faithful servant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reproduced from (\u00a9) The Church Times Conversations were warm, unhurried, and rich with insight. He was the very best kind of mentor\u2019 Canon Angela Tilby writes in the Church Times\u2026. CANON David Winter, who died on 23 August, was a prolific Christian writer, editor, radio producer, senior BBC manager, Reader, and, after he left broadcasting,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":31246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31248,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31245\/revisions\/31248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}