Wisdom from watching

It was chiefly for his work as editor of The Tablet for 21 years (1982-2003) that John Wilkins was made a Doctor of Divinity by Heythrop College on Wednesday.  “He built up the paper as a platform for intelligent, mature and well-informed communication, nearly trebling the circulation,” says the citation. Anna Abram, head of pastoral and social studies at Heythrop, added another quality when she introduced Wilkins to the ­college’s governing body: that of “patient attentiveness”.