Leslie Marsh was intrigued by a book by Peter Howard, and at Kingswood School, Bath, a teacher, Haydn Barnes, encouraged him. After Cambridge he volunteered for a year working ‘whole time’ printing and distributing the good news from across the world. He then worked for 12 months in Liverpool English Electric on the factory floor, with Pat Brennan and Ken Goodwin, before three years (1955-58) Bristol college training for the Methodist ministry, and then one year learning Arabic and studying the holy Koran and Islam.
He served a probationary year responsible for eight East Yorkshire churches, and engaged with the Hull dockers’ leader during a serious strike.
He then served five years in Stoke-on-Trent, where he began to use theatre. Then seven years in Bolton where he built the Theatre/Church. He composed and produced three musicals, ‘Joan’ of Arc, St. ‘Francis’, and a farce, ‘Fancy meeting you here!’ He was asked to launch the amateur premier of Thornhill/Thwaites musical ‘Ride! Ride!’ which then went professional on the national theatre circuit followed by three months in London’s Westminster Theatre. He was a founding director of Aldersgate Productions which put 20 ‘Christian’ shows into the West End in the next ten years.
For fifteen years from 2000 he facilitated courses in Oxford for postgraduates on the historical Jesus – seen as a man of unity for all nations and faiths or none. He also started to write.
Books: Jesus Decoded (2010), Revelation Unpacked (2015), Jesus Jews and Jerusalem (2023), It shouldn’t happen to a Methodist minister (2023), The world’s most dangerous letter: Romans Unravelled (2024).
