41 / 60
39
ST EDWARD’S
r
h
u
b
a
r
b
this year presented it to the
School for auction where it made
the splendid sum of £337.50 for
the Bursary Fund. Among the
clothes chosen for Simon’s burial
was a pair of rhubarb pants!
SUMMERSON
– On 23rd
February 2016, William Michael
Summerson (B, 1964-1969),
after a long illness. He leaves
behind wife Anne, and children
Nicholas, Kim and Jessica.
SWORDER
– On 20th May
2015, Geoffrey Norman Sworder
(E, 1943-1947), father of Michael
Sworder (E, 1971-1976) and
David Sworder (E, 1972-1977).
The following obituary
has kindly been provided by
Geoffrey’s son Michael;
My father came to St Edward’s
in 1943 from Connaught House
School. He had ‘escaped’
internment by the Japanese as
he had had to return to England
for treatment for osteomyelitis,
but his father was not so lucky.
As a result of the treatment,
Geoffrey had a calliper on his
leg and was bullied at school,
and the war years at St Edward’s
were not easy for him. Why he
sent David and me there we
never really understood! He then
attended St Catherine’s College,
Oxford, to read Chemistry. He
led a quiet life at the college (as
far as we know!), apart from his
great love of rowing and the not
insignificant achievement of 6
bumps in the Summer Eights of
1949. A re-enactment of this was
celebrated every 10 years until
the last one in 2009, where five
surviving members of the original
crew turned out for a paddle
over the old course. A dinner the
night before in College slowed
matters down even further! He
continued to support the St
Catherine’s College Boat Club
for the rest of his life. He left St
Catherine’s in 1951 to join ICI
(Imperial Chemical Industries)
at their heavy chemical plant in
Northwich, with subsequent
postings to Magadi in Kenya
and the Pyrethrum Company
in Nakuru. After leaving Kenya
in 1968, Geoffrey re-joined
ICI again and worked for their
Management Services division
in Wilmslow, where he was an
early pioneer of ‘encounter’
groups, and a disciple of Meredith
Belvin. These were the early
years of a sea change in British
management practice and style.
He retired early in 1985 to live
in Devon, and became an ardent
supporter of country life, with
over 30 years in the Devon
branch of CPRE, and more than
20 as a parish councillor. His
private passions were his garden,
shooting and reading. He died
peacefully at home on 20th May,
and leaves behind his wife Mary,
sons Michael and David and four
grandsons.
TOVEY
– On 23rd December
2015, Sir Brian Tovey (D, 1938-
1944).
The following obituary is
written by his daughter, Helen,
taken from
The Guardian
.
My father, Sir Brian Tovey,
a former director of GCHQ,
who has died aged 89, had
a flair for languages that led
directly to his recruitment in
1950 by the recently formed
Government Communications
Centre in Cheltenham. He
worked there until 1983, serving
as director for the final five
years. On retiring from GCHQ,
Brian embarked on a second
career as a company director, in
partnership with his wife, Mary
(née Lane), whom he met in
Cheltenham in 1979 and married
in 1989. Together they provided
political consultancy services
to a number of organisations
and co-founded the Learning
Skills Foundation and the
charity Learning Skills Research,
which support the application
of neuroscientific research to
education methods, for the
benefit of teachers and students
alike. Powered by his energy
and intellectual engagement,
Brian developed a third career
late in life as an art historian,
applying his longstanding love
of Italy and his encyclopedic
knowledge of renaissance Italian
art to the writing of books
and regular book reviews for
the
Art Newspaper
. His work
on Filippo Baldinucci’s
Notizie
,
based on Vasari’s
Lives of the
Artists
, led to his publication in
2005 of Philip Pouncey’s index
of Baldinucci’s biographies.
This labour of love made
him a familiar presence in the
Warburg Institute library in
London. After he and Mary
moved to Oxford in 2010,
Brian continued to work in the
university’s Sackler Library on a
biography of Baldinucci, which
he completed shortly before
he died. The only child of an
Anglican vicar, Collett Tovey,
and his wife, Catherine (née
Maynard), Brian was born in
London in 1926 and educated at
St Edward’s School, Oxford, St
Edmund Hall, Oxford, and the
School of Oriental and African
Studies at the University of
London, where he completed
a degree in Chinese. He knew
Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese
and Vietnamese in their
written forms, and also spoke
Italian. A warm, affectionate
and gentle man, a brilliant
strategist and a natural leader,
Brian received his knighthood,
of which he was immensely
proud, in 1980. His romantic
idealism, which ensured his total
loyalty to GCHQ, also helps
to explain his four marriages
and his conversion to Roman
Catholicism in 1995. Brian’s
eldest daughter, Anne, died in
2012. He is survived by his first
wife, Elizabeth Christopher, with
whom he had four children,
by his fourth wife, Mary, by his
children Dominic, Cathy and
Helen, and by 10 grandchildren
and 10 great-grandchildren.
Brian Tovey
O B I T U A R I E S