Francis Woods

Messiah's Handle Francis Woods

Following his obituary in The Daily Telegraph, I decided to write a book about the life of my father, Rev C. S. Woods. Two lives really, because his 64 years on this earth came in two quite distinct halves. As his brother Richard said in his funeral eulogy, "During the first half no one would have predicted the second half." His life was sharply divided between a rumbustious youth (in 1962, he was released from a Hawaiian jail cell by the Bishop of Honolulu's wife), and - after a miraculous conversion on a rural highway in New Zealand - ordination into the Church of England, followed by three decades of unstinting religious dedication in one of the toughest parishes in the UK. "Kik is one of those people who most shaped my own life and ministry." From the Foreword by Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury.