Little interested in religion in his youth, he became a committed Christian at the age of 21, while serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

He was vice principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford from 1957 to 1960, the founding head of Rochester Theological College from 1960 to 1966, Bishop of Liverpool from 1966 to 1975, and Archbishop of York from 1975 to 1983.

Blanch was evangelical in outlook, but gained the trust of high church Anglicans, and also of Roman Catholics and nonconformists.

[1] William Blanch was killed in a shooting accident in 1923 and his widow and youngest child moved to London, where the two older sons were already living.

He gained employment in the office of the Law Fire Insurance Society Ltd in Chancery Lane at a salary of £90 a year.

"This strange book spoke, its words glowed on the page, and I knew that from that moment my life was bound up for better or worse with the Man who is described there.

[3] Blanch took up the appointment in 1957[5] The chairman of the governing body of Wycliffe Hall was the Bishop of Rochester, Christopher Chavasse.

Nearing the end of his twenty-year reign at Rochester, Chavasse wished it to culminate in the foundation of an evangelical theological college for mature students.

Few of them had an academic background and they were mostly men set fair in their careers as engineers, policemen, garage proprietors, farmers and in many other trades and professions.

[1] In 1966, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, invited Blanch to succeed Clifford Martin as Bishop of Liverpool.

Because he had acquired his faith not from churchgoing but from his private reading of the New Testament, he was, in the words of The Independent, "uncoloured and uninfluenced by anything ecclesiastical and failed to see the relevance of much of it."

The diocese was predominantly evangelical, but there was a substantial high church minority whose relations with some previous Bishops of Liverpool had been difficult.

He bicycled to work … he played squash most Saturday mornings … whenever he could, he went to listen to the Philharmonic concerts (Sir Charles Groves, the then conductor, becoming a firm friend).

[1] They helped to end Liverpool's history of sectarian hostility, and fostered ecumenism in what became known as the "Mersey miracle", built upon by their successors.

He told the press that he found the prospect daunting because he was at a loss with high formality, was not well up on central church administration and had not much political experience.

Of his years as archbishop, Williams writes, "A superb pastor, he presided over a happy diocese and travelled widely in his province.

"[8] Williams notes that while at York, Blanch made ten working trips abroad, carrying out engagements in fifteen countries, in Europe, Australasia, Asia and the Americas.

[3]He resigned in 1983, and was the first retiring archbishop of York to be made a life peer immediately,[1][note 1] being created Baron Blanch of Bishopthorpe in the County of North Yorkshire on 5 September 1983.