The ninth editor of The Tablet did more than rescue it from closure – his ability to distinguish between news and Church PR made the paper essential reading, even in the Vatican

John Anthony Wilkins, who died on 26 April after a short illness, was the ninth editor of The Tablet, and perhaps the most successful. He took over the editorship in 1982 when it was at its nadir – its circulation had dropped dramatically after his predecessor, Tom Burns, had opposed the position on birth control espoused by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. By the time of Burns’ retirement, the paper’s circulation had begun to creep upwards, but not speedily enough to save it. It was the appointment of Wilkins that rescued it from closure.

John Wilkins was born on 20 December 1936, the son of Edward Manwaring Wilkins and Ena Gwendolen Francis: in later life, when John became somewhat stooped, he would say that his father had been similarly afflicted but still managed to “whizz around”. Edward Wilkins was a manufacturer based in central Bristol, making plastic knitting needles and by inheritance a Congregationalist – John’s grandfather had been a nonconformist minister in New Zealand. Ena, however, though she had a Congregationalist background, was a worshipper at the Anglican church in Clifton village, taking the three children with her. Religious conviction seems to have been a source of tension between Edward and Ena: the marriage was not the happiest. John was the oldest of the siblings; Brian died some years ago but John was close to his widow, and he was also very fond of his sister Angela’s two daughters, Louise and Sarah.