Bishop In 1966, the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, invited Blanch to succeed Clifford Martin as Bishop of Liverpool. On opening Wilson's letter Blanch is said to have taken it for a prank by Rochester students. He was not altogether pleased by the offer. Because he had acquired his faith not from churchgoing but from his private reading of the New Testament, he was, in the words of The Independent, "uncoloured and uninfluenced by anything ecclesiastical and failed to see the relevance of much of it." The prospect of exchanging academic life for the complexities of a bishop's duties was daunting. The Times later said, "He was at that time a bad chairman of committees and councils (he got better at it) and he knew there would be plenty of both. He did not know Lancashire. But he knew his duty and off he went to Merseyside." Aged 47 he was the youngest Anglican bishop of his day. In the 1960s Liverpool underwent large-scale rehousing, with residents of inner city slums being moved to new housing estates on greenfield sites outside the city. Blanch supervised the resulting reorganisation of parishes and construction of new churches. The diocese was predominantly evangelical, but there was a substantial high church minority whose relations with some previous Bishops of Liverpool had been difficult. The Guardian said that one of Blanch's greatest achievements during his years in Liverpool (and later at York) was reconciling evangelical and high church Anglicans: "it was universally acknowledged that he left behind him a peaceful and reconciled diocese." The Times comments that Blanch and his wife "threw themselves into the richness of Liverpool life. He grew to love Scouse humour and resilience. He bicycled to work … he played squash most Saturday mornings … whenever he could, he went to listen to the Philharmonic concerts (Sir Charles Groves, the then conductor, becoming a firm friend)." As he had done as a parish priest at Eynsham, Blanch reached out to other Christian denominations. He established friendships and close working relationships with George Beck and Rex Kissack, respectively the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool and the chairman of the Liverpool Methodist District. They helped to end Liverpool's history of sectarian hostility, and fostered ecumenism in what became known as the "Mersey miracle", built upon by their successors. While Bishop of Liverpool, Blanch had numerous invitations to give lectures, as far afield as Alabama