The Revd Martin Whitell writes:

THE Revd Brian Glaister Anderson was born in Bishopbriggs, a few miles outside Glasgow, in August 1935. Both his parents were in the medical profession, his father a gynaecologist and later a GP in Bungay, Suffolk, where Brian grew up. After National Service in the army, he went to King’s College, London, to study theology.

He spent ten years teaching at Millfield School in Somerset, before returning to East Anglia in 1973 to work with the St Barnabas Counselling Centre and to set up the Norfolk and Norwich Counselling Centre, which was sponsored by the Norwich Council of Churches.

He had developed an interest in the Society of St Francis as a boy at school in Cambridge, where they had a large friary. In 1975, he became an Anglican Franciscan friar, initially in Dorset and then, for 18 months, in Alnmouth, where he also worked as a part-time prison chaplain. He moved to the East End of London as PA to Bishop Michael (Fisher), Minister Provincial, and finally chaplain to St Francis School for severely emotionally disturbed teenage boys.

Our paths crossed briefly through hospital chaplaincy and the local council of churches when he was serving at Croydon Parish Church, near to where I was in ministry.

Brian enjoyed institutional life and pursued what became another calling, to work full-time in HM Prison service as a prison chaplain, starting in 1983. This took him to Glen Parva a large young-offenders’ prison outside Leicester, then in two prisons 12 miles south of Birmingham: Brockhill and Hewell Grange; and finally to HM Prison Parkhurst, from where he retired in 1996.

While at Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, he worked with a Hampshire Magistrate, the Revd John Sturges, Minister Emeritus of the John Pounds Memorial Unitarian Church in Portsmouth. The Portsmouth congregation had been through a difficult time, and had warmed to Brian’s experience and personality and, later, in 1996, he was invited to become their Minister. He remained the Senior Minister here until 2010, when he retired on his 75th birthday, having made a distinct impression among the local community, at the Portsmouth Grammar School, and in the wider Unitarian movement.

I had the privilege of working with him for ten years in Portsmouth and he was an admired colleague. Although the Unitarians respected him highly and received a great deal from his experience and wisdom, he never became a member of their ministerial roll. He remained loyal to his Anglican roots throughout, and seldom started a sermon without reference to the Church Times. Portsmouth Cathedral, yards from the Unitarian Church, allowed him the use of one of their counselling rooms when needed to continue this gift of ministry. His great loves were his rescue dogs, Mr Chips and Toffee, who were his constant companions in both services and the city.

Towards the end of his ministry in Portsmouth, he was provided with an Anglican retirement-dwelling outside Southampton, where he stayed until his last dog died. He then moved to the College of St Barnabas, in Lingfield, where he made many friends and enjoyed his final years.

Predeceased by his sister, Fiona, he died in hospital after a fall on Maundy Thursday. He was in his 85th year.