Perhaps his only regret was that he did not have the flambeaux lighted outside nor have the opportunity to open his birthday presents.It was as hard to imagine anybody grander in voice, dress and style than Brian Brindley. He applied an archaic code of manners of which few knew the rules and was easily offended when invisible boundaries were overstepped. He had a clear, logical brain that made much possible that nobody would have imagined, and talked with mesmeric brilliance and wit, sometimes unkindly. He was clever to the point of genius, but never superficial.Brian Dominick Frederick Titus Leo Brindley (Dominick and Titus were taken on his ordination, Leo on his reception into the Roman Catholic Church) was the son of Frederick Brindley, an electrical engineer who successfully ran a small specialist firm in Islington, north London, that helped to evolve television. Frederick was an orphan and self-made man from Birmingham who rose to solid bourgeois status and lived in a stockbroker's Tudor house in Bushey Heath with a large garden.Brindley was educated at Gadebridge Park School, Hemel Hempstead, and Stowe during the last years of J.F Roxburgh. It was there that he was enchanted by the 18th-century architecture and park and came under the influence of William McElwee, his tutor, whose civilised standards, broad culture and influence laid the foundations of Brindley's life He wanted to give to others what McElwee had given to him. School friends included Roderick Gradidge, who became an architect, and Colin Anson, later an art historian.After National Service in Germany, Brindley went up to Exeter College, Oxford, in 1951 to read Modern History His tutor was Eric Kemp.

Religion had always interested him but, after the low-church traditions of Stowe, Brindley discovered the intoxication of Oxford Anglo-Catholicism as represented by Colin Stephenson, Vicar of St Mary Magdalene's, who was the most fashionable and urbane clergyman he had ever met It was the last period of Anglo-Catholic confidence. Ultra-high, Stephenson made an enormous impression on the university. Bishop Roscoe Sheldon – bluff, hearty, irascible – regularly celebrated Pontifical High Mass from the faldstool. Brindley absorbed Oxford religion, became a high-church Tory, an Anglo-Catholic with a loyalty to Church and Queen, and an aesthete.There was nothing morbid about Brindley's religion. He combined faith with sophistication and had a talent for humorous verse and satire.

Ned Sherrin entered his life through the OUDS pantomimes and after an early-Victorian production of Sleeping Beauty they were complimented by Neville Coghill and told that it was exactly what an OUDS pantomime should be. Alan Bennett was another friend and together they worked on the revue Beyond the Fringe. But the pinnacle of Brindley's theatrical success was a masque written in the style of Dryden, Porci Anti Margarita, produced in the open air on a sunny day for an official visit to the university of Princess Margaret in 1954 The programme was printed by the Clarendon Press. It caused royal pleasure but Brindley was prevented from attending himself by examinations. Many thought that Brindley had a successful theatrical future and at home he gave wonderful garden and fireworks parties.After a short time reading Law in London, Brindley sought holy orders. This was received with bewilderment rather then hostility by his parents. Brindley had become a member of the congregation of St Mary's, Bourne Street, and enjoyed the rather raffish bachelor social life of the presbytery All his friends went there.

While Gradidge shouted in one corner, gin flowed, and Brindley, his hair parted in the middle and with a slightly grey complexion, would scintillate in another, in a moleskin waistcoat with a thin gold chain.After a difficult time at Ely Theological College, where his precocity caused him to fall out with the Principal, Canon Derek Hill, Brindley secured a title at St Andrew's, Clewer, and in 1962 was ordained in Oxford Cathedral. In later life Hill said Brindley was his most promising pupil. He was a popular and successful curate and did much to improve the church, helped by Gradidge. Brindley took an interest in local affairs and was a conspicuous member of the Windsor & Eton Society. In 1967 he accepted the living of Holy Trinity, Reading and the most significant chapter of his life opened.Holy Trinity was a hopelessly run-down church of no architectural distinction with a small congregation of 30, but in a short time Brindley, assisted again by Gradidge, transformed it by making it a receptacle for fine church furniture discarded as a result of liturgical change or church closure.

Pugin's screen from St Chad's, Birmingham, came first, followed by altars and a door case from St Paul's, Oxford, the magnificent c17 pulpit from All Saints, Oxford, Martin Travers's sarcophagus-shaped altar from Nashdom Abbey, and one of the finest collections of antique vestments in the country, many bought for a song Every piece of altar plate was gilded. Brindley applied an accretive hand and wanted to make the church look as if it had evolved through time Nothing was made to look temporary. Holy Trinity could not be too high and the music and ceremonial were carried out with Continental style and racy perfection. Attracting a large congregation, advertisements were inserted in the Church Times announcing fast trains from Paddington.Perhaps there was a deliberate element of the opera buffa to Brindley's liturgical tastes but a note of seriousness emerged in 1975 when he sought election to the General Synod.