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Archiver > WORLD-OBITS > 2006-01 > 1136635857


From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
Subject: Fw: TROWER: Anthony Gosselin Trower--d.5/12/2005>UK---obits,the telegraph.co.uk
Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 12:10:57 -0000


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter_McCrae" <>
To: "EGS ENGLISH" <>
Cc: "WDB WORLD" <>
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2006 11:26 AM
Subject: TROWER: Anthony Gosselin Trower--d.5/12/2005>UK---obits,the
telegraph.co.uk


> 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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> © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006.
>



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