[1] Born on 22 January 1879 into a legal family (his father was a barrister of the Middle Temple)[1] he was educated at Harrow[2] and Merton College, Oxford (where he was later elected an Honorary Fellow, in 1945).
[4] After ordination in 1903 he served as a curate in Liverpool and Plymouth before his appointment as Chaplain to the Bishop of Durham and then missionary work in South Africa.
I like him, and have always admired him for his unruffled fortitude the day after the Germans blew his beautiful deanery and all his possessions into dust and ashes during one of the worst Blitz-nights.
De Labilliere is also remembered for a last minute change in the Abbey's Armistice Day service in 1938 after Kristallnacht when he included a prayer for the Jewish people 'in their trouble.'
[16] The Deanery was destroyed in the 1941 Blitz[17] and it is said the King and Queen offered him alternative accommodation at Buckingham Palace but he found a new place to live close to the Abbey.