Peter Everington obituary

Original article by Philip Boobbyer

My friend Peter Everington, who has died aged 90, was in his second year studying classics at Cambridge when the Suez crisis came to a head in October 1956. The perceived arrogance and deceit driving Britain’s involvement in the invasion of Egypt shocked him deeply, and prompted him to rethink the direction of his life.

Turning to his strong Christian faith, he felt a call to build bridges between Britain and the Arab world. This led him to switch his degree course to Arabic, and after graduation, in 1958, he became an English teacher in newly independent Sudan. Over an eight-year period, he worked in secondary schools in Port Sudan and Khartoum and at the Higher Teacher Training Institute in Omdurman, and he revisited the country many times subsequently.

While teaching in Northern Ireland prior to Cambridge, Peter had become involved in a movement called Moral Re-Armament (MRA), later renamed Initiatives of Change, which encouraged conflict resolution. Peter attempted this kind of work in Sudan – divided between the Muslim north and the Christian south – by supporting figures on either side who wanted to bring peace to the wartorn country.

One of these was Joseph Lagu, a guerrilla leader who later became vice-president of Sudan before going into exile in London. There, Peter and Lagu worked closely together from the mid-1980s onwards, supporting peacebuilding efforts. In 1996 Peter was awarded the Order of the Two Niles for services to Sudan.

Born in Hendon, then in Middlesex, to Stella (nee Hilleary) and Jack Everington, a lawyer, Peter grew up in Radlett, Hertfordshire, and went to Marlborough college in Wiltshire. He did military service in Hong Kong, and a stint teaching at Mourne Grange preparatory school near Kilkeel in Northern Ireland before going to Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Returning from Sudan to the UK in 1966, he decided to work full-time with MRA. In 1972, he married Jean Robertson, and they spent the first two and a half years of their marriage in Iran. Back in the UK from the mid-1970s, with the couple eventually settling in Acton, west London, Peter was involved over the next two decades in running a student exchange programme for the British-Arab Universities Association.

In 2017, a Khartoum-based cultural organisation published, in English and Arabic, a memoir by Peter entitled Watch Your Step, Khawaja: A British Teacher in Sudan 1958-66.

In recent years, Peter was a lay preacher at his local Anglican church, St Dunstan’s. He also volunteered with Ealing and Acton Support Enterprise (Ease), a charity working with asylum seekers. A cricket lover, he was a member of the MCC.

He is survived by Jean and their son, John.