Oscar Wilde is alleged to have said that there is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about Fr Anthony spent a great deal of his life being talked about Many people have commented on his list of achievements: Catholic Chaplain at Edinburgh University, Deputy Chairman of the Scottish Parole Board, Chairman of the Scottish Catholic Historical Association, Provincial of the English Dominicans, Rector of the University of Edinburgh and many other distinctions. But like many priests, his most valuable work as pastor and counsellor was hidden. During his long career he was an instrument through which many were brought to glimpse the edge of the mystery of God, and through whom many came to hope in God’s goodness and to trust in his mercy.

It was often said of Fr Anthony that he was a man ahead of his time. In many ways he was precisely a man of his time, but in an age which could not make space for prophets. Like many of his generation, his experience was indelibly marked by economic depression and by war. He said himself that in the thirties he, “lost faith in bullets and ballots as a way of re-shaping society, and thought some kind of spiritual revolution was the only hope for the future.” It was this conviction which led him to the Church and to the Order. At the same time a group of theologians in France were stressing the need for a re-centring in the person of Christ and in his paschal mystery.