George Bell, who was bishop of Chichester in southern England from 1929 to 1958, was an unremitting champion of the causes he believed in. Principal among these was his advocacy of closer Christian unity between the European churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. After the Vatican rebuffed his overtures, he concentrated on the Protestant churches of Germany and Scandinavia, and was one of the leading figures in the proposals to merge the witness of Life and Work with Faith and Order, resulting in the decision in 1938 to provisionally establish the World Council of Churches, which was only fully inaugurated ten years later, when Bell became the Chairman of its Central Committee.

But Chandler's main interest focuses on Bell's political goals for the churches, namely peace and international reconciliation between the European nations, whose conflicts had so disastrously led to war in 1914, and to the subsequent marked decline in Christianity's credibility. The initial steps taken in the 1920s were, however, rendered ineffective in 1933 when Hitler seized power in Germany. Bell did not speak German, and hence came to rely on frequent meetings with the young German Pastor Bonhoeffer, at that time stationed in London, for information about the German churches. Bell was led to give support to those sections of German Protestantism who opposed the Nazi infiltration of their churches, and who in 1934 took the name of the Confessing Church, led by Martin Niemõller. As Chandler admits, Bell's admiration for these men included a measure of wishful thinking when he came to believe that their opposition to Nazism represented the true soul of Germany. As a result, while he was on a visit to Sweden in 1942, Bell met secretly with representatives of the Confessing Church, including Bonhoeffer, who provided him with details of the German resistance movement. Bell was persuaded to take this information back to the British government and to ask for some assurances of support if the resistance movement could overthrow Hitler and seize power. But in fact, when Bell met with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, he was rebuffed and met with suspicion. In Eden's view, this was a piece of unwarranted clerical interference in highly secretive matters which should be handled only by professional diplomats. But, as Chandler explains, Bell was not to be deterred. Sympathy for the ordinary Germans was undoubtedly a motive in his, now notorious, speech in the House of Lords attacking the R.A.F.’s bombing of German cities and towns, which aroused tremendous opposition from both his colleagues and the wider public. According to his supporters, it was this speech which cost him promotion to the archbishopric of Canterbury after William Temple's sudden death in late 1944. In July 1945, Bell again caused resentment when he organized a memorial service in a large London church in memory of the martyrs of the German resistance, including Bonhoeffer, at a time when Britain was being flooded with reports and pictures of the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps, and there was no sympathy for Germany. Two months later he was the first English bishop to visit the now conquered Germany and to greet the leading survivors of the Confessing Church in Stuttgart, who issued their own Declaration of Guilt, much to Bell's satisfaction.

All these steps only served to increase Bell's unpopularity at home. But Bell's personality was complex. He was essentially a loner, and not a team player. He was incapable of attracting or holding large audiences, and much preferred meeting with individuals in the sanctity of his London club. He never sought any kind of popularity, and indeed, even after the war, earned considerable discontent in his diocese by his frequent absences to attend ecumenical meetings in Geneva or elsewhere. But he remained constant in his attachment to this wider cause. Even after he retired in early 1958, he travelled to Denmark to preach at the World Council's tenth anniversary. He died in October 1958 still in harness.

Necessarily, Chandler has to deal, in a concluding appendix, with the unproven accusations against Bell of child molestation, first given publicity in October 2015. Chandler is one of a panel, including high-ranking lawyers, seeking to show that this is a case of mistaken identity, and so vindicating Bell's hitherto unblemished reputation. But the inquiry is still unfinished.

Chandler's sympathetic and well-written biography supersedes the earlier study written fifty years ago by Canon Jasper, and has the advantage of having full access to the voluminous Bell papers, now housed in Lambeth Palace Library, London. He is also working on an edition of Bell's correspondence with European church leaders, complementing the two volumes of the exchanges over twenty years between Bell and the young Dutch theologian Visser ‘t Hooft, who was appointed the first General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, which were recently published and edited by Gerhard Besier. We can hope that this treasure-trove of recent church history will be used for the production of more volumes in the future.

Chandler's achievement in this perceptive account is to remind us of the continued relevance of Bell's prophetic vision for the churches in pursuit of international peace and confraternity. The names of the dictators may have changed, but the need for vigilance and action by churchmen of all denominations remains unaltered. This is surely the legacy that Bell would have wished.