William 'Bill' Birch Reynardson, businessman and countryman obituary

The Daily Telegraph: 16 August 2017

Bill Birch Reynardson

William "Bill" Birch Reynardson, who has died aged 93, was a soldier, lawyer, City businessman
and countryman, with a passion for hunting and opera, serving as a popular chairman of the
South Oxfordshire Hunt and chairman of Garsington Opera.

Well-connected, with a wry sense of humour, from his father Birch Reynardson inherited
Adwell House, an early 18th century house in Oxfordshire set in seven acres of gardens
which he opened annually to support local charities.

A traditionalist in matters of taste, he once asked a friend what he thought about the hi-tech
Lloyds Building. When his friend said he liked it, Birch Reynardson responded: Youre a
pseud, Im afraid.

He was a partner at Thomas Miller, the shipping law and insurance firm, and for many years
was vice-president of the Comit Maritime International. He had no betters when it came to
steering meetings towards consensus. In the summer of 1982 he had to present a major report
to Saudi Arabias minister for ports, on a draft maritime law for the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Over nearly an hour he took the minister section-by-section through 100 pages of legalese and
at the end the minister expressed complete agreement with everything he had said.
Birch Reynardson confided to a colleague afterwards that he had forgotten to bring his reading
glasses and had conducted the presentation entirely from memory.

When there was a downturn in the shipping market in the mid-1980s, he sold the flat in Victoria
that went with the job of senior partner, and gave up the firms butler and chauffeur as well as
the weekly seats at Covent Garden.

Bill Birch Reynardson was born on 7 December 1923. His father,

Lt Col Henry Birch Reynardson, had been wounded at the Battle of Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia
in 1915 and after the war worked as military secretary to Lords Athlone and Clarendon,
Governors General of South Africa, where Bill spent his early years.

He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where his Law studies were interrupted by
war. After winning the Belt of Honour at Sandhurst he was posted to Algiers to join the
9th Lancers. In June 1944 his regiment was posted to Italy, where he was involved in fierce
action at the Battle of Coriano Ridge.
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In October he was hit by mortar fire and ended up having three fingers amputated in a Rimini
hospital, where he shared a room with Winston Churchills son Randolph and Evelyn
Waugh: They never stopped talking (seldom to me) and constantly drank whisky day and night.
I was glad to move on.

During the war, Birch Reynardson was walking out with Lorna Bailie (who later married
Sir Gordon Palmer of Huntley & Palmers). For five years, between 1943 and 1948, Lorna wrote
to her boyfriend almost every week (all her letters to him at the Front were burnt in
Birch Reynardsons tank) and she received 242 letters in return.

These formed the basis of a book Birch Reynardson wrote in 2008 called Letters to Lorna which
provided a fascinating insight into the destructiveness of war.

After returning to Oxford to finish his degree, he was called to the Bar in 1952, practising briefly
before joining the Chamber of Shipping and then Thomas Miller in 1960. He was senior partner
from 1981 to 1988.

When the Torrey Canyon spilt its cargo of oil on the Scilly Isles in 1967 it was Birch Reynardson
who teamed up with Lord Devlin to draft the Civil Liability Convention on which most
international oil spill compensation law has been based since 1970.

He presided over the expansion of Millers, and several new businesses were started, including
the Bar Mutual, which insures barristers in England and Wales against professional negligence
claims.

Bill Birch Reynardson and his wife Nik in 1996 CREDIT: DESMOND O'NEILL FEATURES

In 1950, he married Nik Humphries, the daughter of General Sir Thomas Humphreys, with
whom he had three children, moving into Adwell in 1959. He was appointed High Sherriff of
Oxfordshire in 1974.

In the late 1980s, despite protestations from his wife, he began staging opera in the gardens of
Adwell, and it came as some relief to her when Leonard Ingrams suggested that opera should
be held at nearby Garsington instead. Birch Reynardson joined the board of Garsington in 1989
and became chairman on Ingramss death in 2005. He was instrumental in helping the opera
move to his friend Paul Gettys Wormsley estate.

Birch Reynardson was involved in many aspects of life in Oxfordshire and in 1997, when the
government threatened to close down the local hospital in Watlington, he and a group of friends

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formed a trust which bought the hospital from the NHS and rebuilt it to modern standards. It is
now a thriving care home.

He retired from Thomas Miller in 1992 and was appointed CBE.

His wife, who supported him devotedly, died in 1997 and some years later he moved from the
big house to the Garden House, where he was looked after by his loyal housekeeper, Lorrie,
who had worked for the family for 60 years.

Birch Reynardson is survived by two daughters and a son.

William Birch Reynardson, born 7 December 1923, died 4 July 2017