Tony Dumper was born in Surbiton, Surrey, the son of a bank clerk who gained a MC in the First World War.

He attended Surbiton Grammar School before going to Christ's College, Cambridge[3] where he studied history under the notable scholar and pacifist Charles Raven.

[4] As a pacifist, he was a conscientious objector during the Second World War, agreeing to work on the land[5] before completing his Masters.

While training for ordination at Wescott House, Cambridge, he joined the Salvation Army relief team working in post-war Germany as a youth officer.

Visits to remote estates had to be made with an armed guard and he was advised to wear his cassock at all times so as to be recognised as a man of God and not a colonialist.

These experiences led him to write 'The Christian politician' (1967, USPG, Observation Post 4 - Political Involvement, views from Rhodesia - Ghana - Guyana - Singapore).

He had spent 21 years in Malaya and Singapore, leading the parishes he worked in through a time of turbulence and change, establishing a firm foundation for the development of a modern Anglican church.

He was part of a British Council of Churches Inter-Church Task Force on South America, visiting El Salvador and Nicaragua in 1984.

During his time in Malaya and Singapore, together with his wife and family he spent holidays roaming the jungle around Maxwell Hill, now Bukit Larut and Taman Negara National Park.

In the UK he and Sybille spent several years visiting the Torridon Hills in Scotland and later, the Italian Dolomites.