Austin Marsden Farrer (1904–1968) grew to maturity in a Europe in upheaval. He was an adolescent during World War I and shared the experience of privation in Britain. He was a young adult throughout the period of the General Strike in the United Kingdom and the economic slump that followed it, observing at a distance the rise of National Socialism and Fascism in a Europe that had also witnessed the Russian Revolution and the advent of Communist governments. World War II was associated not just with the aerial and saturation bombing of cities of civilians, but also with the unimaginable horrors of systematic mass murder, and not only in Europe. Although we associate Farrer with the Oxford in which he spent most of his working life, we need to keep this larger framework in mind if we are to appreciate him, the context that nourished him and his world of friends of various degrees of intimacy that we are going to bring into focus in this chapter. We begin with Farrer himself, broaden out to look at his circle of friends and acquaintances, and return to him in the last part. I want to pay particular attention to three key women thinkers of this period, because their influence is often underestimated.

Education

Austin was born the middle of three children into a lively, learned Nonconformist family, to whom he paid a profound tribute: ‘From first infancy our elders loved us, played us, served us, talked us into knowing them; and so the believer claims that he has been brought by mediated divine initiatives into the knowledge of God’. At St Paul's School in London, he received a predominantly literary and classical education, which included the invaluable practice of learning by heart both poetry and prose. He had no pretensions himself to be a poet of much significance, though write it he certainly could. He was also able to translate texts from the Western Church's inheritance of Latin liturgy and devotion.

Farrer's literary gift was to be displayed in an inimitable prose style, especially that intended for oral delivery, as in his sermons, and his sensitivity to metaphor and imagery was to flower especially when he dealt with the biblical text. It takes someone thoroughly familiar with poetry in many styles and several languages to engage with the wealth of genres to be found in scripture.