(which earned Cranborne the sack from William Hague). By Onslow’s estimation 60 per cent of active hereditaries had survived, with the Conservatives’ position strengthened. Lord Onslow was at various times High Steward of Guildford, and a governor of University College, Buckingham, and of Guildford Royal Grammar School. He married, in 1964, Robin Bullard, daughter of US Army Major Robert Lee Bullard III and of Lady Aberconway, with whom he had a son and two daughters. His son, Viscount Cranley (Rupert Charles William Bullard Onslow), born in 1967, succeeds to the earldom.
Lt Julian Charles Lewis Jenkinson Late The Royal Dragoons by George Courtauld
Julian was born to Barbara, the Honourable Mrs Jenkinson, on her 21st birthday, on 28th of April 1926 at Claridge’s Hotel, London. He thus had a most welcome and auspicious start to his long and interesting life. Robert, his father, was the owner of Knaphill Nurseries in Buckinghamshire. Julian’s childhood there must have created his love and immense knowledge of gardening and plants. However, much of his early life was spent with his mother and stepfather, James Baird. His adolescence was during the war, when his family, like many others, was kept moving around, dodging German bombs. His sister Clare said that this persistently nomadic life was very unsettling and she thought that the later security of nearly 50 years at Follyfaunts with Diana was a very beneficial influence to his feeling of confidence and well-being. He was educated at Cothill then to Eton, where he went to Littleton’s house. Mr Littleton was known for producing young men of excellence in both learning and behaviour. Julian then went on to Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Royal Dragoons in January 1945, in the last months of the war. He obviously wouldn’t fit into a tank, and fortunately his squadron was equipped with armoured cars: their main job as the war was ending was scouting. After that they became part of the BAOR – British Army on the Rhine, and Julian was involved with ‘mopping up’ procedures, some of which included the very unpleasant task of sending prisoners back to Stalinist-occupied Europe. His Eton and Army friend, Archie Smith-Maxwell, said that he noticed that ‘whatever the situation, Julian behaved with complete decorum. He was not a prig, he was just an oldfashioned, perfect, gentleman’. In December 1948 he left the Army and Germany - he arrived in England accompanied by a small rough-haired German, a dachshund called Brownie - the first of many. He travelled round Europe as a salesman for Gillette (in Sicily he was unwise enough to choose as his agent a man who not only represented a competitor but was also the leader of the Mafia). Before marriage he was strikingly admired by the girls Audrey Hepburn was one of his conquests - but he eventually had the great sense to pick on the delightful Diana Catherine Baird. They were married in 1953. He left Gillette and then took a variety of other jobs (basically in sales and marketing). Then in 1961 he started his own business - with naked ladies, moulding fibre-glass and plastic for shop window models. He then founded VERINE which made and sold plastic and fibre-glass garden ornaments, the first designs being moulded from the garden ornaments of his
98 ■ Obituaries
grandfather, Lord Harcourt. Over the years this expanded into architectural mouldings then gas fires. Julian’s particular talent, apart from his initiative, drive and perfection, was his brilliance at marketing and selling. The people at Verine from top to bottom were incredibly loyal and many spent effectively their whole working life there. He was well like by his staff, they trusted him as an honourable man who kept his word. Julian had an intense love for his family he was loved by many generations a loving husband to Diana for 58 years, an adored father to Dermot, Karen and Laura, and equally an adored and admired grandfather to Emily, Oliver, Sophie, William, Nicholas, India and Scarlett, and to his very many friends. The motto of his old regiment was SPECTEMUR AGENDO - Let us be judged by our deeds. A great and great-hearted man, he will be well judged.
Lieutenant Colonel George Edwin Evans OBE ARCM psm Late The Blues and Royals George Evans was born on 6 January 1926 in the small mining town of Pontypool. He began playing the cornet at the age of seven, his elder brothers playing trombone, euphonium and tenor horn, and he played his first solo at in the Methodist Central Hall, Newport, at the age of 11. He later became assistant solo cornet in the Coventry City Salvation Army Band. George was conscripted in December 1944, joining the Somerset Light Infantry at Colchester. At the end of his initial training he was asked to perform at a company concert, playing Post Horn Galop, Zelda and a ballad Trees, accompanied by the Band of 2nd Battalion the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Private Evans was due to be posted to India to a Rifle Company but returned from embarkation leave to find that Bandmaster Taylor had arranged for him to be drafted to the Band instead. This period included a six month tour of Palestine where he spent his 21st birthday on railway guard duty. He left the Army at the end of his period of conscription. Mr Taylor persuaded him to re-enlist with the Band of the 3rd Carabineers (Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards) and he joined them at Tidworth in 1947. He played rugby for the Regiment and rose to the rank of Trumpet Major. He was also at this time occupying the solo cornet chair with Morris Motors Band under Harry Mortimer. The Band’s Kneller Hall Inspection led to him being asked to become a student bandmaster much earlier than he had planned as Lieutenant Colonel Meredith Roberts was keen to swell the class with the best trumpet players in preparation for the forthcoming Coronation. Student Bandmaster Evans took his place with the Kneller Hall Trumpeters on the organ loft in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953 for what must have been one of the best views of the whole ceremony. He later became Band Sergeant Major at Kneller Hall.