The following obituary is written by Sherard Cowper-Coles

“Edward’s here”, I shouted up the staircase in Magpie Lane in Oxford. “Edward who?” came the carefully choreographed reply, from Alex Wylde (JH 67-72), who was giving a party at Corpus, Oxford, to celebrate Edward Turner’s state visit to Oxford. As always with our beloved former Second Chaplain, we showed our affection by trying to puncture his paper-thin pomposity.

When Edward Turner arrived at Tonbridge for the Michaelmas Term in 1969, he created a minor sensation, not just in the School as a whole, but mostly for Va, whose form master he immediately became. He started as he went on, always in a hurry, always in pursuit of excellence, with a style and a certain intellectual snobbery that disguised the kindest and most generous of souls, someone probably shyer beneath the show than he ever let on.

That year – 1969-70 - with him as our teacher left indelible impressions for life. He treated us like grown-ups, encouraged us – incredibly – for the first time to call each other by our Christian names, and said he would be teaching us Theology, not and never just Divinity. And so he did, starting with a breath-taking walk through the Book of Revelation that none of us will ever forget, as we marked our bibles – I have still have mine – up with his comments and explanations. He had us to coffee at home. He played us Stravinsky: I so well remember hearing the Rite of Spring leaping out from his gramophone in our classroom underneath the Smythe Library. And he took us to St Paul’s Cathedral, to put on a show based on Revelation, written and produced by us, accompanied by Stravinsky.

Edward Tuner and the Warner Society, Michaelmas 1972

Edward, or ERT as we called him, talked about economics (his other love), and business (before becoming a priest he was said to have had a brief career in the drinks trade), and about that strange and distant land – the North of England. But he didn’t just talk about the North: he took us there, through the art of LS Lowry and on the wonderful expeditions to Coventry, to experience everything from the football club to the Massey Ferguson factory, from the Cathedral (and John Piper) to a Sikh Gurdwara. Closer to home, he marched us through Thamesmead, to experience through the local priest, later bishop, what an urban ministry was really like.

Edward enriched the life of the School in so many – sometimes surprising – ways. He coached rowing – the Colts IV, I think – pedalling furiously beside, and on one famous occasion into, the Medway. As an officer in the CCF, he became Second Lieutenant the Reverend Edward Turner: my brother remembered him administering the eucharist in a midge-infested Scottish glen, using a Land Rover as his altar. He founded a theological discussion society – the Warner Society, named after a colonial bishop, I think – to which we were invited to present papers, and from which another of my brothers resigned after reading a paper on an Indian guru which Edward had dismissed as “rubbish”. 

Edward overlapped with Michael McCrum as Headmaster for only one academic year, but they soon got the measure of each other. Edward had studied Hebrew at Cambridge, and told us that the way McCrum initialled documents bore a close resemblance to the Hebrew for Jahweh – the ineffable name of G-d for Jews. This of the man who went on to be Head Master of Eton, Master of Corpus, Cambridge, and Vice Chancellor of that university. I assumed it was Edward’s customary exaggerated sense of academic humour, until, years later, studying Hebrew before being posted to Israel, I discovered that, all those years before, Edward had been right: McCrum had signed himself as God. We never knew if he knew.

Edward’s other trademark was his blue Mini, which he drove dangerously fast, including once causing the engine to explode on the Tonbridge by-pass, and which, in mark of affection, appeared in the Chapel nave one Skinners’ Day, after a Herculean effort by a group of leavers.

In all of this – his kindness, his hospitality, his generosity with his time and his advice, his intellectual rigour, his unceasing activity – his great ally and constant companion – and wisest adviser - was his dear wife Anne. I am sure Edward had her in mind when he preached one of the greatest – among many great – sermons I heard in Tonbridge Chapel, on the simple theme of “You must be friends as well”. 

Edward went on to even greater things, as a Canon of Rochester Cathedral, managing – with his formidable administrative skill – Church schools across Kent, and playing a prominent part in the public life of the county. But he kept in touch with Tonbridge, and Tonbridge kept in touch with him, not just in Kent, but during his long and happy retirement in Norfolk, where he continued, almost to the end, to contribute so much to the Church which was his life.

Like so many of his pupils, I owe Edward so much – more than he ever realised – and give grateful thanks for having known him, as a teacher, as a mentor and as a dear friend.

(CR 69-81)