Bridge, Basil Ernest

Author

b Norwich, Norfolk 1927. City of Norwich School and Cheshunt Coll, Cambridge (BA/MA). In 1951 he was ordained to the pastorate at Knowle (Warwicks), then Abbot’s Rd Congregational (now URC) Leicester from 1955, Stamford and Bourne (Lincs) and Bedford; he retired to Norwich. For many years, together with his wife Muriel, he has been active in the Hymn Society. His earlier hymn texts were collected in The Son of God proclaim, and other hymns (1986), which took its title from his 1962 prizewinning communion hymn, and his first. 30 texts and 8 tunes are in print in several Free Church and Jubilate collections; among them, Jesus, Lord, we pray, written in 1977 for his younger daughter’s wedding in the following January. The 2005 edn of A Panorama of Christian Hymnody carries a different pair of texts from those in Praise!, including This is the truth we hold, (for which he composed the tune HARROLD) while Hymns and Psalms (1983) also has 2, Rejoice and Sing (1991) 3, and NewStart (for the Millennium, 1999) has 5 in a total of 71. His self-selected share in Come Celebrate: contemporary hymns>/i> (2009) is 10; this does not include The prophet had a vision, set to his own tune MICAH in 1975,which expresses the biblical (and late-20th-c) longing for a global peace. Nos.29, 937.