Along with the last of the Christmas cards there arrived the Trinity College Cambridge Annual Record. It is a beautifully restrained piece of production, printed at Cambridge University Press with an elegant one-colour paper cover, 136 pages well-edited text and a handful of beautiful illustrations of the college, some of which are in colour. Trinity is indeed beautiful and these photos don't do it justice.

The last pieces in The Record are an obituary from the The Times  and an address by the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, about Harry Williams. I had missed notice of his death until I saw these.

I met Williams when, as a 16-year-old, I was invited to an interview to see whether I would be an appropriate member of Trinity assuming my exam results were satisfactory. I was studying biology, physics and chemistry and was applying to read medicine. It was therefore slightly surprising to be interviewed by someone who showed absolutely no interest in my clever rehearsed pieces about natural selection and cell differentiation. This genial old monk very courteously invited me into his rooms on Great Court.

He offered me my very first gin and tonic. If I'd thought of it I might have been expecting  a sherry but G and T it was. We discussed rugby and the harshness of schools and the absurdity of exams. Then he offered me another G and T and more chitchat. We shook hands and two weeks later I had a letter telling me that I had a place provided I passed the exams reasonably well. When I started my rather undistinguished Cambridge career he was my 'moral tutor'. His broadminded liberalism was a huge relief to me.

I'm sure the interview wouldn't pass muster today where they have to be more 'rigorous', take into account 'balance' of admissions ensuring not too many middle-class people enter the college. I imagine, however, that what I enjoyed was what had been practised successfully quite some time as this list suggests.

The obituaries told me more about Harry Williams than I had known. I certainly didn't realise the impact he had on theology. I do, however, know that the interview with him and its result had enormous impact on my life and I am grateful to him for that.