As a young Unitarian, Julian completed a ministry foundation and further education top-up year at the Unitarians’ Manchester College, Oxford (MCO) with a Sheffield Grammar School Exhibition Fund award. He proceeded to our ministry on a lay basis (LPiC) in succession to his principal at MCO (who was also our minister with oversight) on coming up to London to read law. He is now the longest-serving minister / lay leader at Brixton since its foundation in 1839, and in the London and Southeast District currently.
He read: law at the LSE (LLB [Hons]), Inns of Court (PGDLP [Bar]), and 1 Gray’s Inn Square Chambers (Pupillage); and, mid-career at the Bar, theology and ministry part-time at Oxford (Regent’s Park College: Advanced Diploma & Diploma, Biblical & Theological Studies) and Edinburgh (Edinburgh Theological Seminary: Certificate in Independent Church Ministry) (by long-tradition, Brixton Unitarians being, above all, an independent church). He was also honoured to attend the International Council of Unitarian Universalists’ (ICUUs’) / Protestant Theological Institute’s International Church Leadership Course at the Unitarian Academy, Kolosvar / Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania.
He has also studied: folklore with Mark Norman (Folklore Society); the history of witchcraft, magic and the occult with Thomas Waters (Imperial); and antiquarianism and archaeology with Fay Stevens (Oxford).