Release and After
Following his release he was elected a Fellow Commoner at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, England, where he wrote his first book, Taken on Trust. This quickly became an international best-seller, and headed the lists in the U.K. and elsewhere. He also decided to make a career change, and determined to devote himself to study, writing, lecturing, and humanitarian activities. His second book, Footfalls in Memory, was published in the U.K. in 1995, and was also a best-seller. His latest book, published in October 2000, Travels with a Primate, is a humorous account of his journeys with his former boss, Robert Runcie.
Waite has also contributed articles to many journals and periodicals, ranging from Reader's Digest to the Kipling Journal, and has also supplied articles and forewords to many books. In 1992, Durham University awarded him an honorary degree. He currently holds the position of Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.
In January 1996, he became patron of the Warrington Male Voice Choir in recognition of the humanitarian role adopted by the choir following the Warrington bomb attacks. Since then, he has appeared with the choir for performances in prisons in England and Ireland to assist in rehabilitation programmes. Prison concerts have become a regular feature of the choir’s Christmas activities.
He is also a co-founder of Y Care International, a development agency linked to the YMCA movement. Recently he founded Hostage UK, an organisation designed to give support to hostage families. He is also president of Emmaus UK, and patron of the Romany Society.
On 31 March 2007, Waite offered to travel to Iran to negotiate with those holding British sailors and marines seized by Iran in disputed waters on 23 March 2007.
Waite was awarded an honorary degree (D.Univ) by the Open University at an award ceremony in Ely Cathedral on 30 May 2009.
He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Chester in 2009 at Chester Cathedral.
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Famous quotes containing the words and after, release and and/or release:
“Me, what’s that after all? An arbitrary limitation of being bounded by the people before and after and on either side. Where they leave off, I begin, and vice versa.”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“The near touch of death may be a release into life; if only it will break the egoistic will, and release that other flow.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)