The Rt Rev'd Dr Eric Kemp, ECLJ
27th April, 1915 – 28th November, 2009
Eric Waldram Kemp was Lincolnshire born and bred – a ‘yellowbelly’ as he described himself - and he loved the county of his birth. He loved English watercolours, which he collected with discrimination, and English literature - when not dictating letters on long car journeys he would listen for hours to recorded readings of Trollope, Dickens, and Tolkien whom he had known at Oxford. He was passionate about Elgar and English music and was thrilled at Worcester to become part of the Three Choirs Festival. He also enjoyed contemporary music and was a fan of Britten and the operas of Harrison Birtwistle. He loved the English theatrical tradition, one of the many enthusiasms he shared with his wife, Pat, and it was a source of great pride to him that among the many achievements of all his children, Edward has become well-known as a director and dramaturg. He loved Chichester, its cathedral and the Palace, where the family made a real home, and soon grew to love Sussex, its varied countryside and crowded coastline. He was proud to be its bishop.
Significantly, he truly loved the Church of England in spite of, or perhaps because of, all its idiosyncrasies and he was at home in its corridors of power and at ease with its way of doing things. There was much of the spirit of the Caroline Divines and the Tractarian leaders about him and their voices could be heard in his sermons. He was suspicious, however, of Anglican liturgical prissiness and was heard to say after a cathedral service, “What this place needs is less good taste and more Gounod.” As a scholar he knew more about the Canon Law of England than anyone else in his generation, he was instrumental in its revision and took great pleasure in being the founding president of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, a position he held until his death.
But Eric was also a great European, politically, ecumenically and culturally. He loved Germany, first visiting the country in 1933 between school and university. He loved its music, particularly J.S. Bach – whose fugues he could sing to silly words, and the operas of Richard Wagner, and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ‘Ring’ cycle, remembering the names and special qualities of the Brunnhildes, Wotans and Siegfrieds he had heard over seventy years of opera-going. The Chichester twinnings with Bamberg and Bayreuth and the consequent visits were a source of great enjoyment while his work on the Meissen Agreement was to bear great fruit ecumenically. He was equally at home in France, particularly enjoying the food and the wine and, of course, the twinning with Chartres, where his friendship with successive bishops and doyens of the cathedral resulted in a canonry of honour in 1998.
He willingly responded to an invitation to join the Sussex Commandery of the Order early in its life, hosted its inaugural function at The Palace and loved to make the 12th-century Lazarus reliefs in his cathedral the focus of devotion when the Commandery met there for worship. He continued regularly to attend after his retirement and was generous in his charitable support for the Order’s work.
For all his reticence and apparent shyness, Eric loved people - above all his family: Pat, their four daughters, Sarah, Katharine, Alice and Harriet, and their son Edward and he was thrilled to be a grandfather. He held friendship in very high regard and within that the virtue of loyalty. He was hugely loyal to his clergy, going to great lengths to support them and their families in times of trouble and difficulty, but was more hurt than he cared to show when his kindness was returned with infidelity. Though he never wore it on his sleeve, he had a deeply pastoral heart and took great care from the beginning to get to know the diocese, its parishes and its people so as to discern how best to lead them. 
Most of all he was a priest to his fingertips, utterly loyal to the daily office – always the Book of Common Prayer - and the daily offering of the Eucharist. May our Lady, St Lazarus and all the saints pray for him, and angels and archangels guide him to his rest.
