[2] Neville had two brothers, the elder of whom, Edward, was to join the Community of the Resurrection, and the younger, Gilbert, was to be killed in action in the Ypres Salient in 1915.

Of his sisters, Mary married Lionel Ford, the Headmaster of Repton and Harrow and later Dean of York, while Lavinia was after his wife's death to keep house for him and bring up his children.

Much of it was like a shooting party, and the hazardous self-exposure in the clear air of the veldt remained his first taste of danger.

[5] During the World War I he served as a military chaplain (4th Class),[6] he was later Assistant Chaplain-General[citation needed] to the Fifth Army.

[citation needed] In April 1918 he was married to Cecil Mary Eastwood by his father at West Stoke Church, near Chichester.

[8] He was appointed to St Mary's Church, Nottingham in 1933 and as Assistant Bishop of Southwell the next year.

This is explained by the comment of a priest in the diocese: He arrived snuffing like a great war-horse, longing for the battle; determined to bring Nottingham to the feet of Christ.

He was not a little handicapped by the fact that he came just when the migration from the city began, with the result that the old-fashioned kind of worshippers had largely moved into the country.

The parish was largely non-residential, and the church was surrounded by factories and offices which Neville used to visit carrying handbills announcing the special dinner-hour service.

In co-operation with John Francis McNulty, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham, and Mr James, the Free Church leader, he helped to create the Nottinghamshire Christian Council,[citation needed] which owed much to the combination in Neville of an outspoken loyalty to his convictions with a warm spirit of fraternity.

In May 1941, Neville wrote from Nottingham :[citation needed] We had a visitation – nothing compared with some places, but still a very real taste.

Such experiences convinced him that far more was needed on the spiritual side in the Chaplains' department, and he began a long and unwearied bombardment of the authorities (military and ecclesiastical).

In November 1942, the two archbishops wrote to inform him that he had been appointed as one of the seven men that were to give the greater part of the time to visiting Air Force centres.