The Right Reverend Peter Walker, who died on December 28 aged 91, was Bishop of Ely from 1977 to 1989, having previously been Suffragan Bishop of Dorchester and before that Principal of Westcott House, Cambridge.
Walker was a model Church of England bishop ”“ devout, scholarly and pastoral ”“ and had a multitude of friends and admirers. Among these was WH Auden, who once observed: “Friendship with Peter Walker was one of the best things about coming to England.”
Walker was of liberal outlook, and his thinking was much influenced by the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran theologian who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 and who, during the years of his imprisonment, asked some radical questions about traditional doctrine. But Walker was no extremist, and the title of his only book, The Anglican Church Today: rediscovering the middle way, written in retirement, faithfully reflected his lifelong outlook.