THE Reverend Donald Reeves, who died aged 90 on October 31, was Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, from 1980 to 1998, and one of the Church of England’s most remarkable priests.

He was described by Margaret Thatcher as "a dangerous man" and a dishy vicar by Jilly Cooper.

Donald St John Reeves, born on May 18, 1934 in Chichester, became not only a clergyman but also a fervent campaigner.

He was a leading member of a cohort of progressive and socially engaged Anglican priests that crested in London in the 1970s and 80s.

A significant figure in initiatives for ecumenism and reconciliation between faiths, in the late 90s Reeves set up a charity, Soul of Europe, which worked particularly in the Balkans after the Bosnian war.

Thatcher’s warning to her ministers followed an initiative in which Reeves invited political and military personnel from the Soviet Union to meet their European counterparts to discuss securing peace at his rectory at a time of cold war tensions.

It gave him the title for his memoirs, though Conservatives continued to attend and address meetings at St James’s. “I don’t think you are very dangerous at all,” Enoch Powell told him after one such occasion.

Reeves actually got on quite well with Thatcher on a personal basis, although their politics were poles apart.

He was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset, and after national service as a junior officer in the Royal Sussex Regiment studied English literature at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Once he had graduated he joined the British Council as a lecturer in Beirut, where he came across the so-far unexposed spy Kim Philby, and on his return to Britain studied for ordination at Cuddesdon Theological College near Oxford.

He served his curacy at a parish in Maidstone, Kent, before being recruited as a chaplain by Mervyn Stockwood, the bishop of Southwark, who was radical and privately gay, like Reeves himself.

In 1968 Stockwood encouraged Reeves to take a sabbatical working among young black civil rights activists at an urban ministry social project in Chicago.

It was an experience that radicalised him and changed his life.

An ardent peace campaigner he would become an evangelist for ethnic and gender equality, women’s ordination and gay rights in the church.

Returning to south London, Reeves was made vicar of St Peter’s, a church set in a housing estate in Morden, and 11 years later moved to St James’s, Piccadilly.

After taking early retirement to Crediton, Reeves set up Soul of Europe with his painter partner, Peter Pelz, to promote inter-faith harmony and reconciliation.

Most of the funds were raised by the couple themselves, who toured Britain and Europe speaking to a range of government organisations and individuals who might help them.

The charity’s most significant project was the rebuilding of the Ferhadija mosque at Banja Luka in Bosnia, which had been levelled by the Serbs in 1993 and was rebuilt by them with the aid of Turkish government money.

Reeves, who also published a number of books, was made MBE in 2008.