Owen of Uppingham - Primate of New Zealand

Published by AR Mowbray & Co. Ltd, Oxford, 1965, 105 pages.

Headmaster and Archbishop-these were the twin peaks at the beginning and end of R. H. Owen's career. He was only twenty-eight when in 1915 he became Headmaster of Upping-ham School, a remarkably early age at that period for such an appointment. He stayed at Uppingham for eighteen years during which time he carried out radical reorganizations and set his seal upon the school. In 1946, at the age of nearly sixty, he undertook fresh responsibilities in a new country by accepting the bishopric of Wellington, New Zealand. Six years later he was elected Archbishop and served as untiringly in that high office until ill health forced retirement. The years between brought a variety of experience. He was, among other things, chaplain of Brasenose College, Oxford, and a junior naval chaplain in the Second World War. But wherever he found himself, his life provides a record of duty calmly assumed and steadfastly performed. Whatever authority he held, he himself was always `a man under authority.' The firmness of his faith was the thread that ran through his whole life.