Remembering...Aylwin Tyndal-Atkinson OP

The son of an Anglican clergyman, Fr Aelwin Tindal-Atkinson was born in Zurich in 1896, and was brought up in England. After leaving Lancing College, he joined the Royal Flying Corps and at the end of the First World War, he studied at Oxford where he became a Catholic. He went as a seminarian to Fribourg, but decided to offer himself to the English Dominicans.

He received the habit in 1923, made his profession on 10th November 1924 and was ordained priest on 2nd June 1928. By the following year, Fr Aelwin was to be one of the original members of the new Blackfriars community in Oxford. Although it was originally intended that he continue studies, he went in 1929 to teach in the Dominican boarding school at Laxton Hall, Northamptonshire. For ten years he was in charge of the liturgical life of the school and for the last five of those also in charge of the boys' religious development.

Academically, his concern was to resurrect European and Christian culture from its 'museum status', and to educate in mind and emotion a generation of integrated human beings as the "living stones" for a new Jerusalem.

He became a military chaplain at the outbreak of the Second World War and for most of it was the senior chaplain in Scotland where he won much respect. In 1945 he was elected prior of Oxford and three months later, provincial of the English Province. The following year, at the invitation of the Master General, he became a member of his council with the title 'Provincial of Scotland' and so he presided as vicar general of the province at the elective chapter before proceeding to Rome. As well as being a member of the council there he was also for a term Prior of Santa Sabina. In 1957 he left Santa Sabina and became a penitentiary at St Mary Major's where he stayed until his retirement in 1974.

Shortly after his return to England he died very suddenly in an accident in London, on 4th December 1974, aged 78 with 50 years of profession and 46 of priesthood.