The Rev Canon Tim Roper writes: May I add to your excellent obituary of Henry Chadwick (June 19). I was a student of theology in 1957.

Henry would arrive, panting, straight from the hockey field, at 4.02 for a 4pm supervision. In his rooms he used to dash behind a screen while we sat demurely. “Prophesy!” he would call, and we would read our essays to a blank screen from which emerged sounds of one changing. Finally, Henry would appear, dapper as ever, and deliver himself of learned thoughts about Bultmann, form-criticism, or whatever. Thirty years later I met him. He still remembered.

Bishop Timothy Dudley-Smith writes: Ten years ago Henry Chadwick convened and chaired a small group charged with compiling a new edition of the venerable Hymns Ancient and Modern, eventually to be entitled Common Praise. At the start of each meeting we stood while he led us, word-perfect and from memory, in saying together John Cosin’s “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire”. But at the close he would ask me (his junior in every possible way but in episcopal orders) to pronounce the blessing. We would all much have preferred him to do this for us; but I remember it as a mark of his respect for church order, of his friendship and of his humility.

One day, over lunch, he told us of a visit he paid to an American Foundation where, on learning his name, the receptionist told him that the director would, of course, want to meet him and show him round.

At the end of his visit the director loaded him with complimentary copies of the collection’s publications. When Henry modestly demurred, he was assured that no courtesy on their part was too great to offer such a scholar, the decipherer of Linear B.

How (or, indeed, whether) Henry enlightened them that he was not the John Chadwick they supposed, we were not told.

Dr J. E. T. Trainin writes: I have read with remorse of the death of Henry Chadwick, the former Dean of Christ Church. When I was a first-year undergraduate at Christ Church in 1967 I was invited to lunch at his lodgings as were some three or four other undergraduates. He was not merely a genial host, but exceptional. I never managed to discover why I had been selected for this honour.

Many times later, when I crossed paths with him, frequently when he was moving from the Dean’s lodgings to the cathedral, he would reiterate to me “Smite the Amalekites” with his fists raised. I never had the temerity to ask him to what he was referring, even though I know the Old Testament reference.