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From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
Subject: TROWER: Anthony Gosselin Trower--d.5/12/2005>UK---obits,the telegraph.co.uk
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 11:26:49 -0000


Anthony Trower
(Filed: 02/01/2006)
The Daily Telegraph and the telegraph.co.uk


Anthony Trower, who has died aged 84, was senior partner of the solicitors
Trower, Still & Keeling, of Lincoln's Inn, a family firm of which his father
and grandfather had been senior partners before him; earlier, he saw wartime
service in France with the SAS.



During his father's time as senior partner in the 1950s, Trower, Still &
Keeling had become legal advisers to the government of Bahrain; under
Anthony Trower, the firm became well-known throughout the Gulf states, with
offices in Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman - as well as in Cairo.

While alert to such new opportunities, Trower's instincts were generally on
the conservative side. For skiing in the early 1970s he still donned a tweed
jacket and cap and plus-fours - and as he passed a skiing class, the French
instructor was heard to remark: "Ca c'est un vrai anglais."

Long after most men had given up wearing bowler hats in London, Trower
continued to wear his - and it was the same one that he wore when he rode to
hounds with his local hunt, then the Puckeridge and Thurlow.

He lived in Hertfordshire, at Stanstead Bury, the spacious Queen
Anne-fronted house that had belonged to his family since the 19th century.
Each morning he would walk across his fields to the railway station, and
leave his gumboots in the signal box, where he kept his shoes for work.

He always sat in the same seat on the same train, opposite the same man;
half way through the journey they would swap newspapers - and not once, it
was said, did they ever exchange a word.

On the farm at Stanstead Bury, until the late 1970s, Trower kept the oldest
herd of Guernsey cattle in the world outside Guernsey itself.

Walking home from the station one day, he saw a straw stack on fire, and
hurried to help extinguish the blaze, hanging his suit coat on a fence.
After the fire had been put out he found that one of his Guernseys had
chewed through the coat, leaving teeth marks on his silver cigarette case.

Anthony Gosselin Trower was born in London on July 12 1921. His solicitor
father, William, was knighted for services to the Conservative Party; his
mother, Joan, was a daughter of Lord Tomlin of Ashe, a Law Lord. As a small
boy Anthony would march around the house singing The British Grenadier, and
was disappointed to discover from Lord Tomlin that peers did not sing this
song while seated in the House of Lords.

From Eton, aged 17, he joined the Hertfordshire Yeomanry in 1939. He went on
to serve with the Political Intelligence Department in the Middle East and
India, before joining 1 SAS.

In June 1944 he was parachuted into the Morvan, north of Dijon, as part of
Operation Houndsworth, the purpose of which was to prevent the Germans from
reinforcing their units in Normandy from the south.

Having jumped from a Halifax bomber, Trower, a fluent French speaker, landed
in a cabbage field, where he was at once warmly embraced by a local woman.
The Jeeps that were dropped with him came down in a wood, and 40 trees had
to be cut down before the vehicles could be extricated.

Subsequently, Trower's troop moved to the Côte d'Or, where they blew up the
Dijon-Beaune railway line three times, and the Beaune-Paris line once,
derailing two trains. In later years, he was a stalwart of reunion trips to
the Morvan organised by the SAS Association, and also helped to ensure that
all SAS graves there had wreaths laid on them on Armistice Day.

At the end of the war, Trower was part of the vanguard that relieved Belsen,
an experience that affected him deeply.

After demobilisation, he qualified as a solicitor and went to work at the
family firm, specialising in private client work. He became senior partner
in the early 1970s.

As well as becoming one of the leading firms of English solicitors in the
Gulf, at home Trower, Still & Keeling developed a particular expertise in
the area of public sector housing, acting for housing associations, local
authorities and the government's Housing Corporation.

Trower's professional life was informed by his belief in personal integrity
and in the importance of teamwork. A man of old world manners and courtesy,
he was helpful and generous to younger partners, and the firm was a happy
place to work. He retired in 1990, the year after Trower, Still & Keeling
merged with another, smaller, firm to become Trowers & Hamlins.

Among Trower's interests were shooting and fly-fishing. He also loved
mountains, and in 1952 was elected to the Alpine Club. Among his climbing
companions was Sir Charles Evans, of Everest fame, with whom he visited the
Alps and, in 1951, the Himalayas.

In later years, Trower confined himself to mountain walking, and in 1981 he
went on a trek in the Himalayas, undertaking a circuit of the Annapurna
Himal, including a crossing of the Thorung La col at 17,500 ft.

Trower was determined to ensure that Stanstead Bury would be passed on
intact to future generations, and successfully defended the estate from
encroachment by a local sewage works, a speedway track, the development of
Stansted Airport, the A414 dual carriageway, a gravel extraction scheme and
the expansion of Lee Valley Regional Park.

Set up by Act of Parliament in 1966 for the promotion of local leisure
activities, Lee Valley Regional Park covers 10,000 acres and has the power
compulsorily to purchase land within its boundary.

The original Bill included part of Stanstead Bury's land, but after Trower
had ably petitioned the House of Lords the Bill was duly amended and the
Stanstead Bury estate was left intact.

Anthony Trower died on December 5. He married, in 1957, Joan Kellett. She
survives him with four sons and a daughter.













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