John Hull, who has died aged 80, was a religious education writer, editor and researcher. After he became totally blind in 1980, he continued his work with high distinction, combining it with major work on the experience of blindness, notably through his book Touching the Rock (1990), described by Oliver Sacks as “Staggering. The most extraordinary, precise, deep and beautiful account of blindness I have ever read. It is, to my mind, a masterpiece.”
Peter White, presenter of Radio 4’s In Touch programme, has described Hull’s impact on him as a blind person: “He had an uncanny knack … of analysing the experience of going blind. Not sentimentally, but with a forensic understanding of what it meant and how it felt. Until I read … Touching the Rock, I didn’t think there was very much anyone could teach me about what it felt like to be blind. After all, I had been blind all my life. But John’s description of what the sound of rain could tell you about your surroundings took my breath away.”
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