In Memoriam

It was a birthday present of a trial flight and a simple question from the instructor of “Would you like to fly over your house or make this a lesson?” that ignited, rather than kindled, Angus’s interest in flying and it was not long before Angus made his maiden solo flight.

Angus Buchanan

(Hn 82)

Angus Buchanan (1964-2021) was tragically killed in a flying accident on May 9th 2021 in Kent whilst piloting his vintage Stampe biplane in preparation for the Vintage Aerobatic World Championships later this summer. A very accomplished and skilled aviator and engineer, Angus also built a Sequoia Falco airplane from scratch in his spare time using over 400 drawings and the wood from a single spruce tree. Angus’s demanding precision and attention to detail together with the paucity of spare time that comes with raising a family and full-time work commitments led to this project taking him 24 years, a feat of endurance, or perhaps a labour of love, that has yet to be surpassed by any other Falco owner.

As with most things in his life, Angus’s career was varied, colourful, and always entertaining. From building warships, becoming an honorary Commander of the RNVR, being the CEO of a FTSE 250 company to milking cows for a living, Angus did them all. Most recently was the CEO of ADF Milking, a Sussex- based milking machinery business, helping the founder to grow it from about 250 UK customers when Angus joined in 2009 to a company that now harvests 4 billion litres of milk a year through its patented clusters in over 30 countries across the globe.

Richard Angus Fownes Buchanan was born on February 20th 1964 in Sydney, Australia, where his father, a Naval officer, was stationed at the time, a brother to Jamie (Hn 75). The family lived variously in Newton Ferrers, Singapore and Faslane before settling in Meonstoke, Hampshire, but wherever they were, mischief and laughter were never far away. Educated at Mount House in Devon and then at Wellington, Angus spent much of his time at Wellington either securing an A grade in Metalwork “A” level under the watchful eye of Phil Shepherd – he regarded the study of Double Maths and Physics as merely necessities to reading engineering at university – or practising the euphonium in preparation for a summer’s busking around Europe. In his final year, with his father working very closely with Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward as one of his two Group Warfare Officers in the South Atlantic

during the Falklands war, he was a school prefect, head of the Hopetoun and head of the Naval section of the CCF.

Before taking up a place at Exeter to read engineering, he headed out to Val d’Isere for a ski season with only enough money for a season pass but the intention of setting up an overnight ski-waxing service for chalet customers, having never waxed a ski in his life. The combination of only the one customer demanding a full refund for the appalling state of his skis after one of Angus’s waxes, washing up for the chalet girls of one chalet in return for a room in the basement of the chalet from which to operate this ski waxing enterprise and charming others in return for the leftover food from their clients’ plates, saw him through the whole season without ever putting his hand back into his pocket.

He did however suffer the ignominy of being pushed out of a moving telecabine half way up La Daille by a friend; although he fell and landed in hysterical laughter, he fell into the path of a passing pisteur, who promptly confiscated his season pass for a week on the grounds of his being mad and a serious danger to other skiers.

Angus walked up the mountain with his skis on his shoulder every morning for the next seven days.

Whilst at Exeter, Angus secured an industry scholarship with GEC and spent much of his summer holidays working as a draftsman in Yarrow Shipyards on the Clyde, which he joined on leaving university, so he moved up to Glasgow. He rose swiftly through the organisation, becoming the youngest ever ship manager in charge of HMS Argyll and appointed Operations Director at the age of 30, overseeing some 5,000 shipbuilders and building Type 42 Frigates for the Royal Navy. His imagination, vision and engineering skills led him to revolutionise the building of ships in the shipyard by constructing the ship in sections, building each section upside down so that all the utilities that run along the ceiling of each deck of a ship could simply be laid out and fixed by a single person, before turning the section over and joining them together, instead of building the whole ship upwards from its keel. It was estimated that this reduced the conventional cost of constructing a vessel by around 20%.

On a holiday in 1988, a friend of Angus’s told him that they knew of a ballet dancer, Cecilia, known as CB, who had recently moved to Glasgow to join the Scottish National Ballet, at which point Angus immediately declared to everyone he met that he was going back to Glasgow to marry a ballet dancer. When they met at a dinner, CB told Angus that if he managed to get her telephone connected in her flat to BT by Monday morning, her having waited weeks for BT to connect her in spite of calling BT every day from a payphone in a corner shop, she would iron his shirts for evermore. The first thing that Monday morning, CB’s phone rang and when she walked out of her flat to head off to work, all Angus’s shirts were tied together, sleeve to sleeve, hanging all the way down the well of the tenement staircase down to the ground floor. CB and he were married in 1992.

It was a birthday present of a trial flight and a simple question from the instructor of “Would you like to fly over your house or make this a lesson?” that ignited, rather than kindled, Angus’s interest in flying and it was not long before Angus made his maiden solo flight. This got off to a particularly inauspicious start when he misheard the directions of Prestwick air traffic control to take off along the runway at 130°; he promptly took off at 310°, the wrong way up Prestwick’s main runway.

Angus joined James Fisher PLC, then a FTSE 250 listed marine services group, in 1998. He, his young family and the tailplane of the Falco that had been built up in the spare bedroom of a second floor flat in Glasgow moved down to Kent, close to Headcorn Aerodrome. Angus became CEO of James Fisher plc in February 2002 and in recognition of his standing in the maritime world, Angus was made an Honorary Commander of the RNVR later that year.

In addition to his passions for his family and flying, Angus was a keen sailor and skier. He is survived by his wife, CB, and two daughters, Hannah, a talented artist who painted this portrait when she was 17, and Eloise, a student at Edinburgh University.

Captain Richard Channer

(Hl 40)

When Emperor Akihito of Japan drove down the Mall to Buckingham Palace, during his state visit to Britain in May 1998, demonstrators on the route waved anti Japanese posters and turned their backs to him. They were British war veterans who had suffered at the hands of Japanese soldiers during the infamous Burma campaign. What they wanted was a wholehearted apology.

Yet one of their number waved aloft a huge Japanese flag and shouted “Banzai!”, the traditional Japanese greeting, wishing the emperor “ten thousand years” of life and prosperity.

Later that day, Captain Dick Channer was interviewed by ITN news outside Westminster Abbey as the emperor attended a service inside. The reporter asked him why he was waving the Japanese flag. He said he wanted to welcome the emperor, and added that “the Japanese have stood with us during the Cold War. The last battle is to turn the enemy into a friend.”

Prince Charles, who met the emperor over dinner, was reported to have welcomed Channer’s flag-waving initiative, and made enquiries about who the lone figure was.

Channer had fought against the Japanese at the Battle of Imphal in Nagaland, the mountainous state in northeast India. The battles of lmphal and Kohima in 1944, decisive in halting the Japanese advance into the Indian subcontinent, are regarded as being among the Allies’ most crucial military victories in the war. The campaign raged for ten weeks, with the Allies routing the 85,000– strong Japanese army, who lost over 53,000 men, dead and missing, while British and Indian casualties were 16,500.

Channer, a 22-year-old officer in the Royal Artillery, was in charge of a gun position of four 25-pound guns shelling the Japanese hidden in the jungle on the 5,000-foot high Shaenan Ridge. This was in support of a division of Indian soldiers of the 6th Rajputana Rifles. Channer positioned his advance gun just 200m from the enemy, pounding them on Lone Tree Hill, a strategic hill-top clearing in the jungle. The noise of the shells overhead was “like trains rushing

through Clapham Junction station,” he recalled. The Indian soldiers captured Lone Tree Hill, counting 88 Japanese dead to their 30 losses.

Channer suffered a shrapnel wound to the back of his thigh, due to “friendly fire”, yet stayed in position overnight. He bandaged his leg before it began to seize up. An Indian infantryman, dug in next to him, was shot dead. Realising the danger he was in, Channer eventually radioed for help. He was carried out on a stretcher for four miles and spent two months in hospitals in Assam. His bravery was rewarded with the Military Cross two months later, the citation signed by Field Marshal Slim.

After the war Channer was offered a permanent commission in the army. He turned it down in favour of working with a movement for postwar reconciliation, in what he regarded as the “ideological war for peace” against totalitarianism.

The international Moral Re-Armament (MRA) movement had opened its centre in the Swiss Alpine village of Caux in 1946. Here many Japanese as well as German, French, and British visitors met over the following years, in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. Among the Japanese visitors were the postwar mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, victims of the atomic bomb, who brought small crosses with them, made out of a surviving acanthus tree, to present to MRA’s founder, Frank Buchman.

Channer was among those welcoming the Japanese to Caux. They included General Ichiji Sugita who had been a leading figure in the surrender of Singapore to the Japanese in February 1942 and was to become head of the postwar Japanese Ground Self Defence Force. The two men became friends.

Channer subsequently made five visits to Japan. In 1995 he was one of 30 British veterans from the Burma Campaign Fellowship Group who visited Japan. They were welcomed by their Japanese counterparts, the All Burma Veterans Association of Japan, and paraded jointly at the Commonwealth War Cemetery in Yokohama. Channer also met the Japanese defence minister.

Channer later commented: “In Yokohama Cemetery there is an inscription from Ecclesiastes, ‘Their glory shall not be blotted out.’ These battles are behind us. Forgiveness with vision is the way for the future. Japan’s material advance has astonished the world. Now maybe we can unite with Japan to help bring about a worldwide advance in the human spirit. We have gone through suffering and pain together. Now together our nations could be healers.’’

Richard de Renzy Channer was born on Christmas Day 1921, in Quetta, Baluchistan, close to the border with Afghanistan. His father, George, was an instructor at the military staff college there. He would be promoted to major-general as deputy adjutant general of the Indian army in 1943.

He was educated at Wellington College and joined the Hampshire Regiment in 1940, before transferring to the Royal Artillery six months later. He was sent on officer cadet training to the Army Staff College at Deolali near Bombay and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Indian army in December 1941. That was just three weeks after Japan had entered the war.

In May 1942, he was posted with the 23rd Indian Division to Imphal and Kohima, remaining there for the next two years until being invalided out. Channer had first encountered the Oxford Group, MRA’s forerunner, before the war. He now joined its international campaigns, which included amateur theatre productions to spread its message, attended by large crowds. One, entitled The Tiger, was written and performed by Japanese students. Channer travelled with them to Brazil in 1960 where 90,000 people saw a performance in Manaus.

He married Christine Nowell, an actress and fellow MRA worker, in Miami in 1952. Their daughter Alison is an executive PA. They played the part of husband and wife in an industrial drama, The Forgotten Factor, which toured India in 1978. Among those who saw it in Delhi was Morarji Desai, the prime minister.

In 2013 Channer returned, with his wife, to Nagaland, where they were received by General Manoj Naravane of the Indian army. Channer took the salute at the war cemetery in Kohima and, as a commemoration, made several crosses out of the bamboo that grows wild in the jungle there.

Prince Charles, who met the emperor over dinner, was reported to have welcomed Channer’s flag-waving initiative, and made enquiries about who the lone figure was.

Richard Channer MC, soldier, was born on December 25, 1921. He died of COVID-19 on January 20, 2021 aged 99.

Courtesy of The Times

Christopher Arthur Culley

(Hl 50)

Christopher was born in Connemara, west of Galway, in Ireland whilst his father was serving in the 7th Rajput Regiment in India. He did not spend a great deal of time in India and along with his brother Peter (Culley OW), he spent his school days and the war years in the care of his grandparents in Ireland roaming the hills and enjoying the shooting and fishing that abounded in those days.

Christopher talked fondly of his days at Wellington and although he was not an academic, his Chemistry teacher once reported, “if only Christopher would look interested”, Wellington brought great pleasure to him, where he excelled in putting the shot and swimming. He recalled winters skating on the lakes, swimming in the outdoor pools and his illicit bicycle and pipe; though he never let on where he went. His father’s premature death precipitated leaving school early with a fond farewell from his housemaster; “Christopher, would you mind taking the [Irish] Tricolour down off the flagpole before you go”.

Thus began Christopher’s life abroad and it was not long before he set forth to learn the trade of tea and rubber planting in Ceylon. His Triumph Twin motorbike, which he famously used to race the length of the island to Trincomalee after a night in the plantation club, brought rather more pleasure than the farming however, and he duly returned to the UK to do his national service. Enlisting, firstly in the Grenadier Guards, he was soon commissioned into the Iniskilling Fusiliers and serving in the Regiment during the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya and it was there that he decided that Africa was his future. After returning to agricultural college at Moulton and marrying Elisabeth Marriott, also with a father in the Rajputs, he soon embarked for Southern Rhodesia to work as a ranch assistant in Matabeleland. Life there was never dull, whether it was sitting up over kills to dispatch leopards that were killing the calves, or unwrapping pythons keeping warm on the bathroom taps; there he was responsible for looking after large numbers of cattle across swathes of thornveld assisted by a handful of Matabele natives. His next job, however, found him ranching, mostly from the back of a horse, for Lord Delamere in Mashonaland near Salisbury (now Harare) but it was not long before the wildness and beauty of Matabeleland drew him back south.

There, he and Elisabeth brought up their two children, Daniel and Vibeke whilst enduring the troubles under the Ian Smith regime. Living in isolated areas during the guerrilla war was not easy and entailed travelling around fully armed, often with militia bodyguards, around in bullet proof Landrovers, whilst living in constant fear of an ambush or night attack on the homestead. He spent many months on call-up duty during this period in the border regions restricting guerrilla incursions across the border and especially enjoyed his time in the Marine Division patrolling Lake Kariba to prevent guerrilla fighters crossing there. Finally after ten happy years on Essexvale Ranch in Matabeleland, he was promoted into head office as Ranching Director responsible for ten of Lonrho’s ranches across Zimbabwe totalling a million acres with 50 000 head of cattle. He also became an advisor to Tiny Rowland, Chief Executive of the Lonrho conglomerate on ranching, not only in Zimbabwe, but also in Swaziland and Argentina, before retiring in 1991 aged 59.

The insurrection in Kenya, in which Christopher did his national service, proved to be a valuable lesson in what was to befall the Smith Regime in Rhodesia and Christopher never lost sight of his ambition to return to Connemara in Ireland. There, he spent 29 happy years of retirement with a half a dozen cattle on 40 acres.

Christopher is survived by his wife Elisabeth, and his two children, Vibeke who is farming in Zambia and Daniel who is teaching at Canford School in Dorset, following a career in the Royal Engineers.

Jeremy Lubbock

(T 49)

The first time Jeremy Lubbock met Barbra Streisand, she wouldn’t stop talking. He had been engaged to arrange and orchestrate Send In The Clowns for her 1985 release The Broadway Album and impatient to get to work, Lubbock finally snapped and told her: “Why the f*** don’t you shut up and just sing?” Nobody had ever spoken to Streisand like that before and, out of shock more than anything else, she did as instructed. His sophisticated orchestration of Sondheim’s song resulted in a hit single and he added strings to two more tracks on the album, which topped the charts.

It was the beginning of a long association that culminated in Lubbock receiving a Grammy nomination in 1994 for best instrumental arrangement for Streisand’s version of Luck Be a Lady. In the event the song did not win, but it mattered not for Lubbock had two other Grammy nominations that year, for arranging Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing and Celine Dion’s When I Fall In Love. The latter, recorded for the 1993 movie Sleepless In Seattle, won him the award.

Lubbock was never an easy man and his relationship with Streisand was at times tempestuous. No matter how big the star for whom he was working, he was uncompromising. While other arrangers would flatter and seek to please, Lubbock’s attitude was: “That’s the way I’ve written it and if you don’t like it, you can get someone else.”

Invariably they did like it and seldom turned to anyone else, although on one occasion Streisand grew so exasperated that she sacked him. Two weeks later she begged him to come back.

The list of those who deployed Lubbock’s arranging skills is testament to his ability to work in almost any style; Michael Jackson, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Dionne Warwick, Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Madonna, Nina Simone, Rod Stewart, and even the rapper Puff Daddy all called on his services and had their recordings enhanced by his arrangements. He was untroubled that working with such stars did not make him a household name but he mused philosophically about his role. When a record becomes a hit, “it’s usually the songwriters, producers, and the performer who garner the acclaim, while the arranger goes virtually unnoticed,” his website noted. It was less of a complaint and more an attempt to set the record straight about the often overlooked role of the arranger in shaping the sound and creating the mood that “turns a song into something that lodges itself in the ears of the record-buying public”.

Within the music industry, Lubbock was revered as the best in the game. He was nominated 13 times for a Grammy, and, in addition to his work with Streisand, he won awards for Chicago’s Eighties hit Hard Habit to Break, and for, arranging Grace, the theme for the gymnastics at the 1984 Olympic Games. There was also an Oscar nomination for best soundtrack with Quincy Jones for the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple. Other blockbuster movies to which he contributed included Twister, Miracle on 34th Street, and Rocky IV.

His success in America, where he lived for more than 30 years, was all the more remarkable for he did not hide his distaste for Hollywood’s affectations. Notoriously unsociable, he was perfectly capable of not turning up even to his own dinner parties. After a day in the studio with Streisand or Jackson, he preferred to spend the night at the piano on his classical compositions rather than partying.

He became particularly close to Jackson for whom he conducted the strings on the 1982 No 1 hit Beat It, from Thriller, the biggest selling album of all time. Jackson seemed to regard him as something of a surrogate father and wrote him long, effusive letters thanking him for his guidance. Somewhat surprisingly in the light of his classical background, Lubbock rated Jackson the best musician with whom he worked.

His personal life was complicated. He was married to Jill (née Nicholls) between 1956 and 1959 and then to Shelagh (née Lang), a South African tennis player. In 1974 he married Philippa Chadwyck-Healey, the daughter of a baronet who was also his cousin. After their divorce in 1987, he married ,musician Melissa Vardey. They divorced in 2008. He is survived by his four children, scattered across three continents. Justin, from his first marriage, lives in Canada and Lindsay from his second marriage, in Australia. From his third

marriage, his daughter Holly is a film editor, and son Rowan is a university lecturer.

Jeremy Michael Lubbock was born in 931, the eldest son of Diana (née Crawley) and Michael Lubbock, a banker who served as a colonel in the Royal Signals in the Second World War and was later instrumental in setting up UNICEF.

His father was also a fine amateur musician and began training his son by ear from the age of three. He developed into a fine pianist playing the classical repertoire until in his mid-teens he discovered jazz and the great American songbook of Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin.

He was educated at Wellington and Oxford university, where his studies took second place to playing in a jazz trio. Torn between a career in architecture or music, he enrolled at the London Architectural Association. He qualified and undertook a handful of commissions but ultimately the lure of music was too great.

After National Service in the Durham Light Infantry he began his professional career as a pianist and singer with residencies at Les Ambassadeurs Club in London and The Blue Note in Paris and in 1959 he recorded a cover of Perry Como’s Catch a Falling Star, under the direction of the future Beatles producer George Martin.

The single was not a hit but he spent the next decade playing jazz clubs around the world and spent considerable time in South Africa and what was then Rhodesia. By the 1970s he was back in Britain working for both the BBC and ITV, utilising his classical background to arrange for big bands and radio orchestras. He was in his late forties by the time he moved to Los Angeles with his third wife in 1977. Towards the end of his life he spent several lonely years in considerable ill health in South Africa, until he was persuaded to return to Britain in 2019 by his younger brother, John, the founder of the orchestra of St John’s Smith Square. To his delight his homecoming was celebrated by a concert of his music at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, which his brother conducted.

Jeremy Lubbock, musician, was born on June 4, 1931. He died of emphysema on January 29, 2021, aged 89.

Courtesy of The Times

Sir William Macpherson of Cluny

(Pn 44)

Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, who has died aged 94, was the 27th Chief of Clan Macpherson and High Court judge from 1983 to 1996; he was, though, largely unknown to the wider public until he chaired the inquiry in 1997 into “matters arising from the death of Stephen Lawrence”.

On the bench Macpherson had been admired for his toughness and intelligence. He was seen as approachable, without edge or side, a man of few words, and a noninterventionist, preferring to let counsel get on with it.

But he was not, as one lawyer put it at the time of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, “exactly up to date with racial awareness training’’; nor, as Lord Justice Leggatt noted on the day Macpherson retired (departing the Royal Courts of Justice to the skirl of bagpipes), was he famous for his lenient sentences.

His reputation as a hardline conservative prompted the parents of Stephen Lawrence, through their lawyers Imran Khan and Michael Mansfield QC, to object to his appointment as head of the inquiry.

They claimed that Macpherson was insensitive to race issues, and cited his judgments, including one in which he had ruled that a white mother in Middlesbrough could withdraw her child from a class with a large number of Asian children, even though her motive was racial (the child had come home singing nursery rhymes in Hindi). On another occasion, Macpherson had proposed that racial discrimination should not be tackled by the law, but by “goodwill and good sense”. He also had one of the worst records for refusing applications for judicial review in immigration cases.

Yet despite the family’s concerns, Macpherson remained in place, alongside the three inquiry members appointed with him: John Sentamu, a Ugandan-born bishop; Thomas Cook, a former West Yorkshire police chief; and Richard Stone, a Jewish general practitioner.

Together they heard 59 days of evidence, which resulted in 12,000 pages of transcript, and trawled through more than 100,000 pages of statements and reports. During the inquiry, Macpherson appeared genuinely shocked at the catalogue of police incompetence and moved by the Lawrence family’s plight. He eventually published his report in February 1999.

Within its 47 chapters and 335 pages, the central and most contentious finding was that the Metropolitan Police was permeated by institutional racism, albeit unwitting, and that this had infected the investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

In a statement in the House of Commons, the Home Secretary Jack Straw said Macpherson had “opened our eyes to what it’s like to be black or Asian in Britain today”.

A leading article in The Guardian called the Macpherson report “a volume of shame”, praising it as “thorough and wise – and a devastating indictment of the pernicious and institutionalised racism running through the Met as well as the ‘flawed and indefensible’ police work the inquiry discovered everywhere it looked”.

Others were less convinced, perceiving that Macpherson had bent over backwards to be even-handed and in doing so had ended up being unfair to the police. The Daily Telegraph described the report as “a misguided and unfair document whose recommendations, if enacted, would do serious harm to race relations and the rule of law”.

Other commentators on the Right noted that Macpherson had put the ugliest possible interpretation on everything the police had done in their investigations.

Macpherson’s critics went so far as to argue that he had created the conditions for a white backlash, and hence bore responsibility for the subsequent breakdown in policing and race relations, and for the increase in reported robberies and the reduction in the number of reported drug offences. Writing in the Telegraph, a year after the publication of the report, Tom Utley commented that Macpherson had “blood on his hands”, because the police did not dare to stop and search for fear of being branded racist.

Macpherson was “surprised, disappointed and momentarily angered” by the personal attacks on him, but said it was “water off a duck’s back”. Many journalists, he countered, lacked his experience of the world, which included 25 years in the Territorial Army and many hours spent with murderers in their cells when he was a practising barrister. He also suggested that Scotland Yard should “stop whining and complaining’’ about his findings, and said it was time for the Metropolitan Police to “get over it” and “get on with it”.

William Alan Macpherson was born on April 1 1926, the son of Brigadier Alan David Macpherson, DSO, MC, the 26th Chief of Clan Macpherson, and his wife Catharine. He was educated at Wellington, where he was a keen rugby player, and at Trinity College, Oxford. His studies were interrupted by four years in the Scots Guards, where he rose to captain.

He later joined the 21st Special Air Service Regiment of the TA, and parachuted into Denmark, Norway and France on exercise; he commanded the regiment from 1962 to 1965, and served as honorary colonel from 1983 to 1991. After trying unsuccessfully for the Diplomatic Service, Macpherson was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1952. Practising as a common law barrister, he earned a reputation for brevity in his courtroom submissions.

He took Silk in 1971, became a Recorder of the Crown Court in 1972 and in 1983 he was appointed a Judge of the High Court, Queen’s Bench Division, and knighted. He was presiding judge on the Northern Circuit from 1984 to 1988.

In 1989 he awarded “substantial” undisclosed damages to Kate Adie over newspaper allegations that her coverage of the American air-strike against Libya in April 1986 was sympathetic to Colonel Gaddafi. In another case he awarded Dusty Springfield damages of £75,000 over a television comedy sketch which portrayed her performing while drunk. In 1991 he awarded £300,000 to the widow of David Penhaligon, the former Liberal MP for Truro, over his death in a car crash. Among more high-profile cases, Macpherson presided in 1993 over the trial at the Old Bailey at which three ex-detectives were acquitted of lying over confession evidence against Patrick Armstrong, one of the Guildford Four.

The next year he presided at the trial of Robert Black, who had kidnapped and murdered three young girls; Macpherson recommended that Black should serve a minimum of 35 years in prison. In retirement Macpherson lived at Newton Castle, his family home overlooking Blairgowrie. He enjoyed fishing, golf and archery; he was a member of the Royal Company of Archers, a ceremonial guard for the Queen in Scotland. He was a past president of London Scottish Rugby Football Club, and of the Highland Society of London.

He became the 27th Chief of the Macpherson Clan in 1969, on the death of his father.

He married, in 1962, Sheila McDonald Brodie, who died in 2003. He had two sons, one of whom predeceased him, and a daughter. His son Jamie becomes the 28th chief of Macpherson.

Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, born April 1, 1926, died February 14, 2021.

Alan Loveless

(W 38)

Alan Loveless was a man in a hurry, as typified by his 97th year in which he drove perhaps his 15th Saab 17000 miles.

The son of an OW, he joined the Wellesley in 1933 and left in 1938 as Head of House, School prefect, member of upper X and member of the Cricket and Hockey XIs. Wellington was the family school and in due course the three boys in his family of six all passed through College.

The Yearbook of 1938 mentioned, “His bowling was disappointing but as a member of the side he was invaluable-his cheerfulness and pantomimic antics both on and off the field were a constant source of amusement to players and spectators alike”.

Alan was a keen sportsman, at one time playing hockey for Hampshire, and enjoying cricket and golf, which he played into his late 90s, throughout his life. He had many happy memories as a boy of watching his hero Frank Woolley lighting up a county match at Canterbury with exciting stroke play. This sense of fun was with him throughout his life. Confined to bed in his closing days, he might recite a rhyme of irregular French nouns to help you remember they ended in x in the plural or come out with a Hindi phrase which stuck with him from India days in WW2 or even sing a favourite song such as The Way You Look Tonight.

After College, he took a Natural Sciences degree at Cambridge before medical training in London and Southampton, and then a call-up to the RAMC in 1944 to serve in India, and later Singapore and Australia. The war over, Alan became a GP in Ramsgate where he joined his father’s practice and later took it over. He threw himself into his work, taking day and night visiting in his stride and later acted as Magistrate and chair of the Juvenile Court, seeking justice and support for the young on his patch.

If he journeyed for work, he journeyed for God and at Iwerne Minster he met his wife to be, Mary. They married in 1951 and enjoyed many happy years bringing up their large family together in Broadstairs. Alan became a lay reader in 1964 and was a valued member of the team at Holy Trinity Margate until he and Mary moved away in 2003. Mary sadly died in 2005 leaving Alan at the age of 86 to learn to cook and wash his own clothes for the first time.

Alan retired as a GP aged 70 and then worked as a volunteer chaplain at the Pilgrims’ Hospice in Margate till 80. When 89 he spent 3 months in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, providing pastoral care and support to hospital staff.

By then he had completed literally millions of miles, many of the early ones to Cornwall from Broadstairs on family holidays with beach cricket firmly on the agenda and then later to Switzerland, Greece and Italy as the family matured. He took great pleasure in travelling to discover new places and meet up with old friends.

As the family grew up and made homes of their own, he would regularly travel to visit them, as well as continuing to attend conferences and Wellington reunions, driving until he was 100 years old.

Ultimately his destination was Heaven, a journey which unexpectedly began with his conversion to Christianity at Cambridge all those years ago.

Alan Loveless was a man of unswerving belief and uncompromising faith and will be much missed by all who knew this remarkable man.

Edmund Haviland

(Pn 42)

Edmund, (the eldest of three sons of Edmund Arthur Haviland and Vivienne Selwyn Brown) was born in Brightling, Sussex, where his father had been Rector. He started at Wellington College in 1937 and was an enthusiastic member of the Picton. He often recounted tales of his time at Wellington including the early war period. Particularly entertaining were his stories of walking round the College during the war, with a broom as a “gun”, when they were part of the home guard. He always expressed sadness when telling us of the Master who was killed one night after a bomber had flown over. More recently, and as an active member of the Old Wellingtonians, his proudest moment was presenting a reading at the Wellington College 150th celebration at the Albert Hall.

On leaving Wellington, he followed his father, the Rev. E.A. Haviland to Cambridge, where he read history. His studies were interrupted by the War and after only one year, he was enlisted in the RAF. He completed his training in South Africa, learning first on Tiger Moths, which earned him his nickname of Tiger. He stayed on in South Africa for the rest of the War; as a Flight Instructor he taught many young men to fly. In 1945, after VE Day, he returned to England and was about to be posted to Burma, when fortunately, Japan suddenly surrendered. He was demobbed in 1947, and went up again to Cambridge to finish his degree. After graduation, he went to Wells Theological College, and in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Arthur Coles Haviland, was ordained into the priesthood. Interestingly, Edmund’s son Andrew is also a priest, and his eldest daughter Margaret has recently been ordained as a Deacon.

After his ordination in 1951 in Southwark Cathedral, he became curate at St Peter, St Helier, from where he served as Deputy Chaplain to the House of Commons.

He married Gillian Johnstone in 1957, and after Margaret was born, they moved to his new parish of Ockbrook, Derby, where Angela, Jane and Andrew were all born.

His next appointment was to a lengthy ministry in East Peckham in Kent, 1968-1984. No doubt he was ready for his time in South Africa, where he served as Assistant to the Bishop of Umtata for a good year. On his return, there came a big change when he was invited to join the team of chaplains at Brixton Prison. This proved to be a moving, exhausting, and yet exhilarating experience, which left an indelible mark on his life. In 1987, through his daughter Jane, he met and married the artist Lady Jane Stevens. They lived in Thursley, Surrey, where (in his so-called retirement), he was actively involved in the parish and often acted as a locum for the parish priest. He also published a book on St. Luke’s Gospel – St. Luke and The Love of God.

His wife, Jane, died in 2019 following which he moved swiftly to The Cathedral Close in Salisbury. He loved and appreciated the majesty and wonder of Salisbury Cathedral and the fellowship of his neighbourhood. He was delighted to live so close to the Cathedral as well as being a short drive to his daughter, Margaret, and his younger brother John (now aged 90!). He rejoiced in many visits from family and old friends and spent much time visiting his children including holidays in Suffolk and Spain.

Edmund died suddenly and peacefully on October 17th, 2020, aged 96 and1/2. His funeral was held on 3rd November in Salisbury Cathedral, where he was welcomed the evening before, to allow his children and grandchildren a period of private grief and prayers whilst he rested among candlelight and memorial poppies. The funeral service, despite being restricted to just 30 guests, was a holy and dignified Communion Service in the wonderful building, enhanced by beautiful flowers and candles arranged by his daughter Angela, a well-established Chicago floral specialist. All four children contributed with readings and prayers and his old friend Bishop David Wilcox, with whom he was a curate almost 70 years previously, sensitively presented the eulogy.

T R Illingworth

(T 59)

Richard Illingworth arrived at Wellington in 1954. At school he was an excellent all-round sportsman. His best sport was rugby, but he also boxed for the school and represented his house at cricket and hockey.

After leaving College in 1959 he went to Mons to gain his commission. He then, like many of his contemporaries from Wellington, joined the 13th/18th Royal Hussars. He joined the Regiment in Malaya and returned with them when they went to Germany in 1961 and converted from armoured cars to tanks. He served in HQ Squadron and was a member of the Regimental Rugby team.

After leaving the army Richard joined the advertising department of the Sunday Times. He was then offered a job at Rudolf Wolff & Co Ltd, the metals trader. He spent some time working for them in Iran. He left Rudolph Wolff to go to New York where he founded his own small metals trading firm. Whilst in the USA he enjoyed considerable success playing croquet, and in 1983 he won the national doubles championship.

In 1985 an opportunity arose for him to start a plantation in Costa Rica to produce and export high yielding disease-resistant hybrid coconut seeds. He became an acknowledged expert on the subject and made many speaking appearances at trade conferences and seminars. He also designed or cooperated with national and state coconut programmes in Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador.

Richard found out that cricket had come to Costa Rica from Jamaica in the late 19th century and been a popular sport with 46 clubs competing between the wars but had virtually died out after World War 2.

Together with some other British expatriates, he set about reviving it with domestic games and international matches against teams from Belize, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Colombia, El Salvador, Falkland Islands, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Peru and Panama. He founded the Costa Rica Cricket Association, which became an Affiliate member of the International Cricket Council (‘ICC’) in 2000 and an Associate Member in 2018. For his contribution to International Cricket, he received the ICC award of Global Volunteer of the Year in 2005 and the ICC Centenary Gold Medal in 2009.

In Costa Rica he met and married his wife, Victoria. They had a very happy 35 years together and made frequent visits to the UK to see their daughter (also named Victoria), his son Thomas Amrta (from his first marriage), and to meet friends from his time in the Regiment and in the City.

Richard Illingworth 1940-2021

Hugh Worthington Wilmer (O 45)

Major Hugh Geoffrey Worthington Wilmer left his post at the age of 93 after a courageous battle; he slipped away surrounded by loved ones.

He leaves behind his wife Phillippa of 67 years, his four children, Phillip (Nancy), Fergus (Jennifer), Roderick (Jennifer), and Juliet (Steven) and his beloved grandchildren, Morgan, Angus, Cameron, Rory, Vivian, and Stuart. He was predeceased by his brother Andrew (Lyndal), and his nephew Giles and niece Jessica live in Australia. Hugh had a generous life. Born in London he attended Wellington College and RMA Sandhurst during the war years. He served with the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) in Trieste, Aden, and in active duty in Malaysia where he met his future wife, the daughter of his commanding officer. Hugh retired from the British Army to farm in Kenya in 1958 and once that adventure became too dangerous for his growing family he returned to Scotland to begin a career in finance. In 1966, he jumped at the opportunity to emigrate to Canada, and his career flourished in Montreal and Toronto, as did his young family who never looked back. In 1998 he retired to focus on one of his passions, farming in Grafton Ont, “Old soldiers never die they just fade away as gentlemen”.

Hugh came from a generation that just got on with it, never complaining and faithful to the end. The family wish to thank the wonderful staff at the Golden Plough Lodge.

Robert Stafford

(Bl 53)

Robert ‘Bob’ Stafford passed away peacefully on 23 October 2020, at the age of 85 due to prostate cancer.

He was a member of the London and Middlesex Rifle Association, serving as chairman and secretary for many years. He also served on the NRA Council.

He was born in London, spent his early years in Sri Lanka, and was educated at Wellington College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge University.

Owing to a hearing issue he was unable to follow in a family tradition of joining the Royal Engineers. But engineering still grabbed his attention and he sold his motorcycle to travel to Canada where he worked building Canada’s highway system. He returned with the most comfortable boots he ever owned, a fur hat he handed down to his grandson decades later, and good memories of his adventure.

After studying electrical engineering at Cambridge, he worked as an engineer in England, first for English Electric in the Midlands and later on for an engineering consulting firm, ERA Technology, based in Surrey. His engineering jobs gave him opportunities for travel, and once in Surrey, regular trips to Bisley for shooting competitions were much easier.

Robert had developed a passion and skill for target shooting at Cambridge, joining the Cambridge Shooting Team and later on representing Oxford and Cambridge in Canada in 1957, and Great Britain against Canada in 1958, 1974, 1978 and 1982. He was Vice Captain against Kenya and Zimbabwe in 1989 and the Captain of the 1993 GB team to South Africa and Zimbabwe in 1993.

He was also a successful individual shooter, reaching the final stage of the Queen’s Prize at Bisley twelve times and winning the silver medal of the Queen’s prize in 1980. He made a number of lifelong ‘shooting’ friends, both at university and on the many international shooting trips he took over the years. His favourite part of these trips was the chance to meet up with his many friends from New Zealand, Australia, Kenya, and South Africa. It was through one of his shooting friends that he met Felicity, his wife. They were married in September 1960 and had three children: Hugh, Tim and Jenny. All three children have fond memories of weekends and summers roaming Bisley camp, getting ice cream and hunting down Robert at the North London on the veranda or in the gun room.

Though Robert and Felicity divorced in 1981, he remained actively involved with his children, encouraging them in their various activities. Hugh got involved with rifle shooting at his school and was an Atheling to Canada in 1981. Tim became hooked on skateboarding and surfing instead. Robert attended a number of Jenny’s amateur theatrical performances in Bristol.

Robert served as chairman and secretary of the LMRA for many years and the Robert Stafford lounge was named after him for his contribution to the Club.

Robert also served on the NRA Council for a number of years, where he presented a calm voice of reason, according to a fellow member.

After retiring from ERA in the late 1990s, he continued to travel, making trips to Egypt and Alaska. He continued to shoot competitively until around 2007. Eventually he switched from target shooting to golf, reporting it was much more comfortable in the rain playing golf! Retirement gave Robert extra time to spend with his children, wherever they were based. He made many trips to the USA to visit Hugh, Cornwall to visit Tim, or Bristol to visit Jenny. The number of trips only increased once he had grandchildren in England and America.

After many years in Surrey, he moved down to Bude, Cornwall, to be closer to Tim and his granddaughter, Seren. Though living in Cornwall made international travel more involved, Robert continued to travel to the USA to see his American grandchildren, Gabby and Will. For many years he remained intrigued by new ideas and adventures – trying out four-wheeling with his grandchildren on one occasion, and having to be persuaded now might not be the time to take up skiing on another. He read voraciously and remained interested in technology, though he was convinced it was designed incorrectly.

Robert was a gentle and intelligent man. He’ll be much missed by the family and many friends.

Courtesy of the NRA

Brigadier Charles Ritchie

(Hl 59)

Charles Ritchie’s military career almost ended before it began when he challenged a fellow cadet at Sandhurst to a duel with shotguns. The cause of the Scotsman’s ire was a friend’s legerdemain in depriving him of an attractive woman’s company at a party.

The cadets’ agreement had been for the friend to collect two female guests before picking up Ritchie at his billet and going on to the party together, but when the friend’s date cancelled he told the other girl that Ritchie had become indisposed and took her to the party himself. Having waited, pacing up and down for several hours, dressed and primed for action, Ritchie’s solitary pre-party drinks session turned sour and he went to bed.

Roused at 2am by the raucous return of his friend, who hesitantly gave a full confession of his conduct, Ritchie, said: “You contemptible bastard, I am challenging you to a duel! Firearms, at dawn, with seconds in attendance”. The appointment was postponed until after lunch and it was decided that each party would take alternate shots, starting at a distance of 75 yards, advancing one yard after each snot, until blood was drawn. Tweed caps and bowed heads would offer some protection to the eyes. In the event the pair walked, shooting at each other in turn with pellets stinging their bare arms until at about 50 yards his opponent charged, yelling a war cry and shooting from the hip, drawing blood from Ritchie’s arm. The friend claimed victory but Ritchie was not satisfied, ambushing him and firing over his head as they returned to the lines. A company sergeant-major predicted their ejection from Sandhurst but the duel resulted only in a dressing down and a lasting reputation for being a swashbuckler. The escapade characterised the luck and derring-do of an incident-prone life during which Ritchie survived encounters with sharks, tribesmen, the IRA and even his own men, as well as arrest by the Russians for espionage. It also showed the passion for drama of a frustrated actor who would go on to mobilise his extrovert’s charm to defuse tensions in hostile environments ranging from Libya to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Living according to his motto that “laughter is the best weapon”, the title of his posthumously published memoir, he was a fine raconteur in the military mould.

Soon after passing out from Sandhurst Ritchie had two scrapes with death in the mid-1960s while serving with the Royal Scots in the Radfan campaign in South Yemen.

One afternoon he was sitting on a radio battery out in the open while taking an early supper, when he came under sniper fire. He collapsed to the floor, thinking that he had been hit. After the firing stopped he realised that he had not been wounded but the battery had taken a direct round.

He had another brush with death while clearing an empty house of bugs so that it could be used for shelter for his mortar section. He ordered a young soldier to “flash-burn’’ it – meaning laying a trickle of petrol inside its walls and lighting it – but the subordinate poured a 20-litre jerry can over the floor and dropped a lit match through a window as Ritchie entered to inspect it. The explosion blew him back 30 yards’ into a cattle ring.

Badly burnt and apparently lifeless, he was given the last rites by a padre as he was lifted into a helicopter. A letter of condolence was sent to his parents in Scotland. Medics then realised that an overdose of morphia had sent him into a coma. He was discharged from hospital a few weeks later without any obvious signs of lasting damage.

Charles David Maciver Ritchie, the elder son of Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Ritchie of the Royal Scots, was born into a military family in Inverness in 1941. At Wellington College he wanted to be an actor but his old prep school friend, Tony Hancock, who would

Living according to his motto that “laughter is the best weapon”, the title of his posthumously published memoir, he was a fine raconteur in the military mould.

later find fame as a comedian, persuaded him to join the army. In 1962 Ritchie was posted to the 1st Battalion in Libya, where he gallantly survived poisoning from a bunch of grapes which local Italian farmers had sprayed with hydrogen cyanide as a pesticide. Not long afterwards he emerged without significant harm from a helicopter crash on Salisbury Plain and shot a wolf with which he came face-to-face at the entrance to his tent during winter warfare training in Arctic Canada. He also swam unperturbed among venomous sea-snakes and salt-water crocodiles off the coast of East Timor and fought off a shark in the waters of Belize.

His memoir modestly glossed over the achievements of a distinguished army career. He was appointed Operations Officer with the British commanders-in-chief mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany in 1978. Suited to the game of “gentleman spying”, his many cat-and-mouse escapades with the East German Stasi ended when, having spent all night in a ditch to photograph previously unseen Russian military equipment, he was captured by members of the Spetznatz (Russian special forces) while making his escape. He was formally expelled from East Germany and appointed MBE. He was later advanced to CBE. While an instructor at the Joint Services Staff College at Greenwich in 1984 he married Araminta Luard, who with their son, Paul, survives him. Araminta would in time become a veteran of his baric tale-telling.

In the 1980s he commanded 3rd Battalion The Ulster Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland and was promoted to brigadier in 1988 at a time when his regiment was subject to increasing terrorist attacks off duty and claims of misconduct on duty.

The remainder of his army career was marked by a series of senior appointments, including national military representative at Shape, the NATO command centre in Belgium, and chief of staff to the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia during one of the most bitter periods of the conflict.

Towards the end of his soldiering life he was appointed colonel of the Royal Scots and an aide-de-camp to the Queen. His final military job, military attaché in Paris, coincided with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, arid he broke protocol by draping her coffin with the Royal Standard, not the Union Flag. He went with his heart, he said, not his head.

After his retirement in 1998 he worked briefly for a Canadian soya company, but it was in roles such as a director of the Edinburgh (now Royal) Military Tattoo and as a member of the Countryside Alliance that his enthusiastic nature shone. His sense of duty and generous spirit won him many admirers throughout his life – even among his enemies. Before his Russian captors had ejected him from East Germany, they held a farewell party out of respect for “the mad Scotsman”.

Brigadier Charles Ritchie, CBE, was born on December 12, 1941. He died after a short Illness on December 16, 2020, aged 79.

Article Courtesy of The Times

Charles Stancomb

(L 61)

Charles Stancomb, Head of School and CCF and Captain of Cricket, Rugby, Hockey and Athletics. At Speech Day in 1961 he was presented with a medal by John Profumo – only a few weeks before he met Christine Keeler!

At Peterhouse, Cambridge he studied economics and began to race Formula 3 cars in local events. After graduating he formed racing team ‘Squadra Tartaruga’ with three friends and competed on major European tracks with some success. However the realities of funding the operation forced them all to re-join the mainstream.

Charles first joined the electronic giant Plessy, moved on to start his own import company and then, with Wellington and Cambridge friend Michael Spicer set up Economic Models, a business advisory company. When this company was sold he became a director of SBI, another business advisory consultancy, where he worked until he retired.

He and his family moved from London to his wife Pat’s family farm in Sussex. Appropriately his eldest daughter Kate also joined the Wellington fold in the newly created Apsley. Upon retirement he was able to indulge in his life-long passion for fishing.

Johnny Thomas, D.l.

(T 51)

Born in 1935 at home at Bryn Illtyd, Pembrey, Johnny Thomas was educated at Well House prep school in Malvern, then at Wellington where he was in the Talbot (49-52), and finally at Millfield (where he had his first motorcycle).

His first job was at Baglan Steel Works, working under his uncle (who later married his mother after his father’s death). From there, he joined Red Dragon Garage at Pembrey, followed by Day’s Garage in Swansea and then a spell with HP company Lombard Banking .

He had by then acquired his first Bentley (of many), later sold to pay for Hunt Ball tickets to take Binks. He met her at his best man’s brother’s 21st birthday and married her in 1959. Johnny and Binks were both “county” without this affecting the wide circle of friends they made in all walks of life, particularly in old vehicle circles.

Married life started in Capel Issa, Manordeilo, then Aynho, where he bought his first garage. Son Christopher was born in 1963, and then it was back to Capel Issa and the purchase of a Carmarthen garage. About this time he acquired the 1909 Alldays tourer and his 1896 Leon Bollee (the first of many trikes) on which he did his first London to Brighton Run in 1963. He took part in at least fifty Brighton Runs in a variety of cars and trikes. Second son Rob arrived in 1966.

Johnny was known, liked and respected by a far wider circle in the old vehicle world. He was a member and Past-President of the VCC and the Swansea Historic Vehicle Register, and a member of the Bentley Drivers’ Club, the Vintage Motorcycle Club, the Vintage Sports Car Club and the Irish Veteran and Vintage Car Club.

At various times Johnny owned a mouthwatering selection of early vehicles – three or four 3 litre Bentleys, a couple of RollsRoyce Silver Ghosts (one of which served as my wedding car in 1981), three 4½ litre Bentleys and a beloved Speed Six. Alldays were always a favourite and he had five motorcycles dating from 1911 to 1920. Other bikes included a Brough Superior SS100 sold for £100(!), and examples (several at a time) of Rex, Premier, Triumph, Ariel, Roc, Ner-a-Car (5), Scott, Rudge, BSA, Douglas, AJS and many others, and on one memorable occasion he was able to assemble about twelve pre-1915 bikes eligible for the 50th Pioneer Run, which he lent out to friends in the West South Wales Section of the VMCC.

In fact Johnny’s rally organisational skills were unsurpassed, and with a mixture of charm and guile he could be relied on to always obtain the best terms for participants. Those same skills were used effectively to diffuse disagreements and arguments, and were used to good effect during his VCC Presidency from 2001 to 2003 – a hectic time for him and Binks.

Whether it was organising Welsh Weekends for the BDC, motorcycle runs for the VMCC, rallies for the VCC, hill climbs with the Napier at Prescott or participating in rallies in France, Holland, the USA and the Irish Republic, Johnny could always be relied upon to be efficient, helpful and cheerful, and as a result made many friends everywhere.

Having served as High Sheriff of Dyfed in 2005, he was deservedly appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Carmarthenshire, and on applying to the College of Heralds for a grant of arms, was eventually permitted to incorporate his racing Napier.

The last time Johnny and Binks visited Wellington was for a Vintage car rally in 2013 for which they were joined by a number of OW friends.

Johnny very sadly passed away in December 2020 and is survived by his wife of 61 years, Binks, and two sons Christopher and Robert.

From a tribute given by his great friend Mike Worthington-Williams

Alan Watson

(Hl 51)

Physician, husband, father, grandfather, friend, world traveller, conversationalist, tennis player, paddler, sailor, lover of singing and Scottish dancing, extrovert, feminist, LGBTQ+ ally, trader of jokes and stories, messy housemate, eccentric Irishman.

Alan Watson completed his “vertical take-off” on January 12, 2021 with his wife Cherry by his side, holding his hand. He was blessed to have made his living and serve his community in a vocation he truly loved. An early stay in hospital had cemented a childhood goal to become a doctor. Alan enjoyed everything about medicine: the intellectual challenge of sleuthing out the diagnosis for an obscure skin condition, teaching others, conferring with colleagues and especially interacting with patients from the broadest possible crosssection of society.

Alan brought an incredible work ethic, integrity, compassion, attention to detail, and conscientiousness to his work. He lived by the Biblical edict to give “good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over....” His non-judgemental nature and thoroughness resulted in top-notch care for his patients. Alan often expressed gratitude for his full life. “I’ve had a career I’ve loved, a wonderful wife and a happy marriage, three successful and well-adjusted children. I’ve travelled the world. I’ve done every bloody thing!”

Alan is survived by Cherry, his wife of 58 years, his three children Susan (Ian), John (Jane), and Simon (Val), and seven grandchildren, Alec, Thomas, Hugh, Madeleine, Blythe, Quinn, and Mikaila. Alan was predeceased by his parents Alec and Katherine and brothers James and Alec.

Alan Ferrier Watson was born on November 4th, 1933 in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh State in Northern India, the middle son of three boys born to Katherine (née Johnston) and Alec Watson. His father was a captain in the British Army during the time of the Raj and his mother was a well-educated country girl and later an administrator.

Tragedy struck early in Alan’s life when his father died in a sailing accident in India when Alan was only five-years-old. The family, who were back in Ireland, received the news by telegram. His mother Katherine was pregnant with his younger brother Alec. Katherine rose to the challenge of being a single parent, with the support of extended family, her army widow’s pension and her own steely resolve. She and her sons moved into a house called “Aylesbury” with her twice-widowed mother-in-law, Maude Kerwin, and her husband’s half-brother, Reg, from Maude’s second marriage. Alan instantly became the man of the family. His older brother James, who likely lived with undiagnosed Asperger}s syndrome, was unable to assume this mantle.

A school master once accused young Alan of lying about the tasks he was entrusted with, incredulous that a child of 6 or 7 would be sent 2 or 3 miles on a bike to cash cheques, mail parcels and make purchases.

Alan attended the Avoca School and Aravon School in Blackrock, Dublin. He often quoted wisdom from one of the Aravon masters, Boss Craig, to his children: “You may BE greedy, but try not to look it!”

At age 13 Alan moved to England to attend the prestigious Wellington College boarding school on a bursary for sons of British officers who had died while on active duty. He was placed in a dorm where extra support was given to boys who had lost their fathers. Alan took advantage of every educational opportunity this outstanding schooling provided for him, laying the groundwork for his academic success at medical school.

He also made lifelong friends, including Colin Lindsay, Kiffer Culley, Michael Hyde and Michael Kilroy. After Wellington College, Alan was accepted by Trinity College Dublin to study medicine and moved back in with his mother, younger brother Alec and a penniless uncle and father figure “Uncle A”. Summers were spent earning university funds on crews blasting hydroelectric tunnels in Scotland and making more friends.

At age 23, Alan “fooled the examiners” and became a fully qualified physician. During a subsequent residency in obstetrics, he would often attend home births in Dublin slums, sending an older sibling out to buy a copy of the freshly printed Irish Times to provide what might be the only sterile surface in an impoverished home.

In 1961, looking like a young Sean Connery, Alan set off on a life of adventure sailing around the world as a ship’s doctor, first on the S.S. Orsova with the P&O Orient Line and then the RMMV Stirling Castle with the Union Castle Line. It was on his first voyage with this new company that Alan met his wife of nearly 60 years, Cherry. His own words were, “I fell totally in love with the beautiful ship’s nurse.” This was the beginning of a lifelong crush and partnership, both in medicine and in raising a family.

After their marriage in 1962, Alan and Cherry moved to Australia, where their children Susan, John and Simon were born. Alan set up a family practice, but found time to enjoy everything this new country had to offer: beaches, sailing, water skiing, BBQs and swimming pools. He indulged his cultural interests in Scottish dancing and joined the chorus of a community production of The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.

In 1972, Alan and Cherry were on the move again, this time to Canada, settling in Waterloo, Ontario. Shifting politics in Australia, as well as medical school friends had encouraged the move. Alan enjoyed another 18 years of family practice. In 1990, he and Cherry spent a sabbatical year in Cardiff, Wales. Alan earned a Diploma in Dermatology – a lifelong interest. Alan made

the most of everything Canada had to offer, enjoying skiing during the winters and canoeing, sailing and camping during the summer. For several summers he ran a hobby business, Rainbow Canoe Trips.

This endeavour established a valued friendship with the instructor he hired, “Mad Monsieur” (Michel Lessard). Alan was formally recognised as a “Notable Physician” by his local peers. After his retirement in 2015, he was awarded the status of “Physician Emeritus” by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Alan’s five-year journey with Alzheimer’s and dementia was a difficult and poignant one both for Alan and his loved ones.

His family wishes to express their gratitude for the love and support of friends and the excellent care that Alan received from Dr. Kathleen Bedrosian and all the staff at the following facilities: St. Joseph’s overnight respite program (Guelph); the Waterloo Recreation Centre Seniors’ Day Program; Emma’s Neighbourhood at Riverside Glen (Guelph); and Dickson House in Columbia Forest LTC (Waterloo). In particular, the family would like to acknowledge the special care he received from Arvin Benito, Gordana, Rose, Sandra and Anna.

Alan was spared from isolation and loneliness during the pandemic through the loving one-on-one support he received from private caregivers Jose Garnica, Kajal Rupani, Simerjit Dhariwal and Natalie Mullings. In an effort to honour Alan’s Irish roots and their own need to grieve, the family had his body brought home for two days. He was laid out on the dining room table and his wife Cherry, children and grandchildren gathered around for a masked, physically-distanced, COVID-compliant wake. Alan’s youngest son, Simon, and grandchildren Quinn and Mikaila, joined in via zoom from Australia. Alan’s funeral took place at St. John’s Anglican Church, Kitchener on Thursday, January 14th, 2021.

Alan Watson, November 4, 1933 – January 12, 2021

Tony De-Mesquita

(Bn 53)

Tony was born in 1935 at Shiplake on Thames in Berkshire. In 1939 the 2nd World War started and he was sent to Prep School at Allen House at the age of 5, and he was the youngest boy ever to go. The problem was that he spent the first few days crying his heart out. The matron failed to comfort him, so the 6-year-old headmasters daughter was sent over to play with him which worked like a dream. In 1948 he went to Wellington College, enjoying a very successful school career ending his final year as Head of House, school prefect, winning the Public Schools Rackets Singles at Queens Club and gaining a place at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

On leaving school in 1953 he did his National Service and was commissioned and joined the Duke of Wellington’s regiment. He discovered that if he served three years on a short service commission his salary was substantially increased. He spent a year in Gibraltar with his regiment and then 18 months as ADC to the general in Nigeria in the acting rank of Captain.

On leaving the Army he decided not to take up his place at Cambridge but to accept the offer of joining Lansing Bagnall who made Forklift trucks. His first job was working in Cardiff as a salesman and working his way up the ladder, he finally joined the board as Sales Director. He achieved many successes which included persuading the Royal Household to use LB’ forklift trucks thus being given the prestigious By Royal Appointment logo on their advertising material. Tony was also appointed President of the European Mechanical Handling Industry which involved business trips to Japan.

He took early retirement at 60 which members of the Board could do on full pension. He married Ann in 1963 and they had three children: Simon, Lucinda, and Jon. In retirement they lived near Lyme Regis before moving to Spain. He enjoyed playing golf always very competitively and loved his garden always keeping it neat and tidy. Tony was a generous host, an avid reader of the conservative newspapers, following the political scene in the UK and also the Stock Market. He lived his life to the full until sadly his health deteriorated.

David Mordaunt

(C 55)

After prep school at Amesbury David came to Wellington in 1950 where he excelled at Hockey and Cricket , satisfied the examiners and left in 1955 as a school Prefect and a leading member of one of Wellington’s finest cricket XIs.

After National Service with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, in 1957 David went to teach at Summerfields where Headmaster Mr Burton, a very keen cricketer, gave him the Summer Term off to play cricket for Sussex. David’s debut was in the Parks against Oxford Uni, uneventful except for breaking a bowler’s finger with a straight drive and then making 96, mostly in boundaries. After two years with Sussex his next cricket was with Berkshire where he was nicknamed the “French Amateur”.

In the Gillette Cup of 1965, DJM made 60 against Somerset, including 4 sixes off Bill Alley and was awarded the Man of the Match gold medal, the first Minor Counties player to achieve that distinction. His exploits for the OWs were legendary, both in the OW Cricket week and the Cricketer cup, none more so than in the Final of 1980 , batting in the dark when he almost got Wellington home. Other cricket included touring with the MCC in North and South America, with Romany in South Africa and playing for FF and IZ.

For David, there was more to life than cricket. The people he played with mattered more than the game. He loved helping, encouraging, guiding people of all ages. This was his purpose, his raison d’etre.

At Wellington he was Housemaster of the Bd for 12 years, in charge of Cricket and Rackets, in charge of CCF camps in the Lake District and Glencoe. He ran the New Forest Marathon. He appeared on the stage for Common Room revues. He was an inspirational Master in charge of Cricket and as a Housemaster he was caring and committed in the turbulent days of the late 60s and early 70s. David was an efficient and popular President of Common Room, a welcoming and gracious host at social events. David was truly a teacher at heart, and loved inspiring young people, and the leading of youth expeditions, many of them with the British Schools Exploring Society, was for many years a staple part of his summer holiday. He had a particular yearning for the fastnesses of the Arctic and (to my imperfect knowledge) he led expeditions to Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Spitsbergen and, one winter, to east Greenland. As reported by one on such a trip “The success of the expedition was in no small part due to the fine leadership of David Mordaunt. He was not only a skilled organiser, but also an understanding friend for many in times of stress and difficulty, above the pretty disputes that tend to arise on any expedition, and one who won the respect of the boys from the start.” There will be many people, now well into middle-age, who still vividly recall the very real excitement of being on one of David’s expeditions, and who remain immensely grateful for the new horizons he opened for them.

He was remembered at Wellington as a man of great integrity and honesty; a person of strong principle, respected by all.

In 1987, he left to become the warden of an Outward-Bound centre at Applecross in N.W. Scotland; a centre set up for the benefit of the less privileged from inner city areas, soon to be taken over by the National Trust. He loved Scotland. In 1990, he married Cathy and moved to ‘Mondhuie’ in the village of Nethybridge, from where the Cairngorms were easily accessible. This property comprised two chalets as well as the main house. Holiday lets of these, as well as a B&B business, became a busy way of life. Sadly the marriage was not to last.

His second partner, June, brought him much happiness, and great contentment. The B&B at Mondhuie flourished with impeccable efficiency and wonderfully warm hospitality. Annual trips to explore, climb and revel in the beauty of New Zealand became a “sine qua non” of life. Impossibly sadly, and after 10 wonderfully happy years together, June passed away and David decided to move back South and to Repton which was near family. David paid a last visit to Wellington in 2019 with younger brother Gerry and presented to the school the Rackets Cup which his grandfather had won at Queens in 1891. It is proudly displayed.

A last word from David Newsome, former Master: “Those who worked with David at Wellington or who were taught by him will remember a man of great integrity and honesty. He is a person of strong principle and great consistency; respected by all who had dealings with him. He was a friend and confidant of many people drawn from different strata of Wellington life and will be much missed by all. He conducted his life with a dignity and charm that one seldom encounters and we are all much the richer for having had the benefit of his companionship.”

Capt. MW Bolton

(Hn 53)

Mike Bolton was one of a kind.

As David Scholey (A 53 ) writes...

“His infectious enthusiasm and unwavering integrity, in every variety of his school career as Prefect, RSM, chapel warden and Captain of Rackets left an indelible affectionate impression on all whom he touched. His Sandhurst and Sappers career were truly Wellingtonian which extended into his lively and loving family life in the island of Ireland. His memory brings a smile to all our hearts”.

At Wellington he was in the Rackets pair 1950-53 and after Sandhurst joined the RE in 1955 and the Sarawak Rangers in 1959. So moved by his experience there, he wrote The English Sea Dayak Dictionary from his hospital bed.

Mike was variously Army Singles (56-59) and Doubles (54,57-59) Rackets champion and Combined Services champion (56). He was Irish Real Tennis champion in 03 . He was a prime mover in the process to restore the Dublin Real Tennis Court. As charismatic chairman of the Governors of Kings Hospital School in Dublin he exhibited the humour, drive and perception that defined him.

Needing to find a school chaplain he wrote to the incumbent at a school in Canada. “I was a head-hunter in Borneo and like the Canadian Mounties, I always got my man“.

A bemused chaplain took time to reply, unsure if this was a job for him. A month later a postcard arrived, signed by Capt. Bolton, which simply said, “Matthew Chapter 11 verse 3”. He knew the reference. “Are you the one to come or should we look for another?”

The chaplain duly came over to Ireland, visited the school, accepted the post, and is there to this day.

After the Army, Mike farmed in Co. Wicklow where stories of him are legion.

A man of prodigious energy, Mike was a superb host and raconteur, had time for everyone and once met was never forgotten. Not larger than life, he WAS life and is still the only man to have jumped from the gallery onto the Wellington Rackets court as his warm-up.

Though not in the best of health in his later years he continued to play his beloved games into his 80s and scrapped for every point.

Mike was a wonderful man, and he will be much missed by all who were lucky enough to have known him.

Our thoughts are very much with Pooh (Patricia) and the large loving family of whom he was immensely proud. Two of his daughters, Tanya and Christie, are OWs and Christie is currently chairing the Education Committee of the Wellington governors.

Mike Bolton 1934-2021