A LIFE which ranges from physics to missionary activity is recounted in Building Bridges and Crossing Cultures, a memoir by Edward Williams, of Guarlford, near Malvern.

Mr Williams and his wife Rosemary spent almost a decade in India as missionaries, starting in 1959, and were well-placed to witness the historic changes in the country as it emerged from colonial rule and embraced independence.

Mr Williams trained as a physicist before he became a missionary.

He said: “My life has placed me at the fulcrum of different and opposing forces, as a physicist yet a believer in God, as a Christian missionary yet having close friends of other faiths.

“My wife and I lived and worked for 10 years in Serampore College, one of India’s greatest and most historic Christian institutions, during the years when we missionaries were bowing out in India.

“The book is not a work of history, but a chronicle of my life and the people and the places I knew.

“It also covers my life in Britain, with reflections on ministry in inner-city multi-faith Birmingham, and in the market town of Alcester, retirement in Malvern, and involvement in interfaith issues.

“I hope it will be of interest to a wide range of people, not least to those in the churches who observe their ministers’ foibles!”

One obstacle he had to overcome in his life is his deafness, which is on the border of being severe in the official classification. He did not get his first hearing aid until he was 17, which gave him plenty of time to learn to lip-read.

“It has been a handicap, but I’ve managed. My sister and I both have this deafness, so we grew up learning to cope with it.”

Mr Williams is still interested in the grey area where science and religion meet. He said: “Someone once said that God is the explanation to that which science cannot explain, but I don’t like that because it’s a ‘God of the gaps’ explanation.

“It leaves you vulnerable when science extends its explanations and fills the gaps.

“I prefer a quotation I was once told, that the whole universe is a thought in the mind of God. I was told it was [eminent astronomer] Sir James Jeans who said that, but whoever said it, it’s rather good.”

Building Bridges and Crossing Cultures is published by Aspect Design, priced at £10, and is also available from Lyttelton Well, Church Street.