Obituaries

We are saddened to report the death of the following OPs:

Richard A King (1947)

Gary King (1976) writes: Richard was born in 1929 and was brought up at the Garden House Hotel (now the Cambridge Hotel). At school, he was a fine 800m athlete, captain of athletics and later ran for the Army. The only acting role he spoke about was his delight when he was chosen to play a role in one of Peter Hall’s productions. Sir Peter Hall told him years afterwards he had only been chosen as he had great knees!

Just before he left The Perse in 1947, he was called into the Headmasters' Office and told he won a National English Speaking Travelling Scholarship to America with three boys from other schools. Off he went on the Queen Mary, on its first trip after serving as a ‘hospital’ during the war. Amongst other adventures he pushed a trolley with $20m of gold bullion at Fort Knox, broadcast from the CBS studios in the Empire State building, and ended up having tea with President Truman in the Oval Office!

Richard had a place at Gonville and Caius College to read Economics and Geography but failed the Latin exam so events took a different course. He answered an advertisement in The Sunday Times for management trainees with ‘fire in their bellies’ and so his career in the exciting world of broadcasting began. From his first week delivering post, he progressed to become Sales and Marketing Director of Pye Group Television. Following an advanced management programme at Harvard he ran Pye TVT – the world of television and outside broadcast vehicles was growing rapidly. He was then asked to run 24 of the Pye companies forming Cambridge Electronic Industries, which was the first company he floated on the London Stock Exchange.

He was always determined to retire from whatever he was doing at 60 but then wanted to devote some time to public service so amongst other appointments became Chair of Cambridge Health authority, and Vice Chair of Addenbrooke’s Richard H Grove (1973) Rohan D'Souza and Tom Empson (1973) write: Richard Hugh Grove, historian, geographer, environmental campaigner and advocate for interdisciplinary environmentalism, passed away in the early hours of the 25th of June in Brighton, just a month short of his 65th birthday.

Richard joined the Perse Prep in 1962, and left the Upper in 1973. Throughout his time at school he was involved in many societies, including the choir, Perse Players, and was hospital, Governor of Anglia Ruskin University and Norwich University of the Arts.

He was one of the key businessmen in the establishment of the ‘Cambridge cluster’, which aimed to bridge the benefits from the brains of the University with industry. Coming out of this the technology companies on the Cambridge Science Park helped Cambridge become Europe’s largest technology cluster.

He was involved in some of these start-ups, some floundered, and some succeeded – perhaps the most notable being AVEVA, an information technology company who now are the UK’s largest software company and a major global player. He confessed he never really understood the technology of most of the businesses he was involved with but clearly knew how to build and lead a good team around him. He avidly supported the development and nurturing of young talent and always had great vision.

He was proud to become an Emeritus fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, and was awarded a CBE in 1991 for services to broadcasting.

He will be greatly missed by his wife, three children, seven grandchildren and seven great grandchildren and fondly

remembered by many others. secretary of the Historical Society. He also spent much of his free time making a harpsichord for the school, alongside Rupert Limentani.

Richard undertook a BA in Geography at Hertford College, Oxford, and followed it up with an MSc in Conservation Science at University College, London. It is tempting, however, to see his formal academic studies as interruptions or supplements to an unfolding and wide-ranging programme of personal research, which saw him immersing himself in various shortterm and far-flung projects, working

as a field-survey ornithologist in Malawi, for instance, or as an employee of UNEP, studying soil science in the former Yugoslavia.

His enthusiasm for interdisciplinary environmentalism and activism intensified as he enrolled for his PhD at Cambridge, where, even before submitting his thesis in 1988, he co-edited with David Anderson the volume Conservation in Africa – a seminal collection of path-breaking essays. Between 1988–92, as a British Academy postdoctoral fellow and Director of Studies in Geography at Churchill College, Cambridge, Richard energetically joined forces with those critiquing the ‘diffusionist model’, which was the standard model for explaining the transmission of scientific and environmental ideas from Europe to the colonies.

Richard’s magisterial Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600–1860 published in 1995, received wide praise for its exhaustive account of the impact of colonialism on environments in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and the shaping of the European environmental imagination through ideas about the botanic garden and colonial conservation. More critically, Richard was able to persuasively argue that the origins of modern western environmentalism were not borne out of the European encounter with their immediate natural surroundings as much as derived from their rich and varied experiences in distant island ecologies and tropical environments.

From the 1990s and well into the early years of 2000, Richard went on to win, almost at will, academic fellowships, grants, short-term tenures and a string of research awards from some of the most prestigious universities and institutes in the world. He travelled incessantly, published prolifically, sparkled at conferences, became a founding member of the journal Environment and History and along with wife Vinita Damodaran set the ball rolling for starting what in later years became a frontline research network, the Centre for World Environment History at Sussex University.

It was also the decade when Richard was increasingly alarmed by what the science on climate change was indicating. He became ever more convinced of the urgency to develop narrative strategies that could meaningfully incorporate climate and weather data for explaining long term historical and social change.

Between 2002 and 2006, Richard and Vinita organised a series of conferences in England and India. The effort was to shake and reorient the field of environmental history in the context of climate change concerns. The emphasis, in particular, was not only to take stock of the rapidly growing research output in the field but to ambitiously work towards evolving the idea of a ‘global synthesis’ that went beyond national borders and nationalist frameworks. Sadly, in December of 2006 Richard met with a near fatal car accident that left him severely disabled.

After several painful years in which Richard was moved between different rehabilitation centres and often hung between life and death with infections and other ailments, he was finally able to return to his house at Lewes under the loving care of Vinita and his son Edwin. Despite the immeasurably tragic setback, Vinita along with some of Richard’s friends and well-wishers took on the near difficult task of collecting, organising and editing the voluminous conference outputs. The result was the publication of the first edited volume British Empire and the Natural World (2011) and the second, which Richard was able to gingerly hold onto to acknowledge and celebrate, was an edited collection titled Commonwealth Forestry and Environmental History (2020).

While it is only expected that a great and brilliant mind such as Richard will be remembered for his many academic contributions and that his intellectual legacy will be kept alive through interpretation and interest, I believe the other side of the coin will actually hold more true: like the scientists, naturalists and explorers from the 17th and 19th centuries, who he so assiduously studied and documented, we will be greatly imperilled if we fail to grasp the importance of Richard’s quest for interdisciplinary environmentalism. As for me, if there is a 2am knock on my door and Richard saunters in, slouches on the sofa and, once again, asks for a cup of tea, I might be tired but not surprised. With him, anything is still possible.

We remember

John R Gerrish (Former Staff) died 17 February 2020, aged 83 years

David K Grant (1944) died 2020, aged 94 years

Michael R H Jeffries (1951) died 16 April 2020, aged 88 years

Maurice W Markham (1963) died 6 April 2020, aged 75 years

Donald C Papworth (1935) died 14 January 2020, aged 103 years

Alan Saggars (1950) died July 2020, aged 88 years

John M Sellers (1960) died 3 August 2020, aged 78 years

Norman Sofier (1949) died 8 January 2020, aged 89 years

Mal Percival writes: Will started at The Perse Preparatory School in Bateman Street in 1934, at the age of four. This was very early and a concession as his father Hugh Percival was a member of staff teaching Classics and games in the main school. He progressed through the school winning many school prizes and becoming Head Boy in his final year. A keen sportsman, he was vice captain of rugby and cricket and in the first teams for hockey and tennis. After National Service, Will read Classics at Emmanuel College Cambridge, following this with a teaching diploma at Bristol University. After a brief spell teaching Classics he decided to make a career in business. He got married in 1957, moved to Enfield and started working for Thorn Lighting. He attended evening classes to gain the necessary accountancy qualifications. He remained with Thorn Lighting and was made Financial Director of the company in 1980. For the next ten years he travelled widely on company business all over the British Isles, and to India, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. John C Pope (1950) Chris Pope writes: John was born in Cambridge in February 1932 and attended The Perse between the years of 1938 and 1948. He made several life-long friends at the School and one of his recollections of his time there was breeding rabbits with Peter Hall.

On departure from the School, John spent his two years’ National Service with the RAF at White Waltham, Maidenhead. During this time he met his wife Sylvia, to whom he was married for 65 years until her death in 2019.

John chose a career in pensions and his first job was with the Norwich Union for whom he worked in London and Manchester. He then joined a small pension advisory firm in which he became a partner and where he worked until his retirement in 1992.

He retired in 1990 and spent many happy times at his holiday home on the east coast where the rest of the family could also stay. Until his late seventies he was able to go on family holidays walking in North Wales and the Lake District with his children and grandchildren. He was interested in all sports, especially rugby, cricket, tennis and athletics. He took his young daughter to the Moscow Olympics in 1980.

He will be remembered for the pleasure he took in reading, debate, discussion and argument. He loved to engage anyone who was game in discussions of big issues such as religion, politics, literature, philosophy, economics and science. He leaves a widow, two sons, a

daughter and six grandchildren.

John took an active role in various conservation societies and was passionate about conserving both the built and natural environments. He also had a love of music and theatre, with opera being a particular favourite and of which he had a deep knowledge. John was also a very keen gardener and created several magnificent gardens from scratch upon moving to a new home, latterly in Northiam, East Sussex, where he and Sylvia spent the last 13 years of their retirement.

John was always actively involved with local communities and was volunteering for the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve until shortly before his death.

John died on 8 May 2020 after a short illness and will be sadly missed by his two sons, David and Chris and their respective families.

This list was up-to-date when we went to print. Obituaries may be read in full on our website: perse.co.uk/obituaries