Mark Wyndham RIP

Kyt · Apr 25, 2008

Mark Wyndham - Telegraph

Mark Wyndham, who died on April 15 aged 86, won a Military Cross in the desert and later worked in industry for his cousin, the novelist Henry Yorke, before becoming a notably successful chairman of the Children's Society and a founder of the 999 Club, a charity at Deptford.

Born on August 7 1921, Mark Hugh Wyndham grew up at Edmonthorpe, the house in Leicestershire which his parents rented between the wars, partly because it was in good hunting country. His father, Edward, was a Wyndham of Petworth, the fifth son of the 3rd Lord Leconfield.

A professional soldier who won a DSO in the First World War and later commanded the Life Guards, Edward had a lugubrious wit and was very happily married to the sociable and quick-witted Gladys Farquhar; but he was generally undemonstrative to his children.

The youngest of the family, Mark had a sister, Ursula, and two brothers: Henry, killed at the battle of El Alamein; and John, who worked for many years for Harold Macmillan before being created Baron Egremont in 1963, reviving an old family title.

Mark was not particularly inspired by his preparatory school, Heatherdown, or by Eton. When war came he joined up, and was commissioned in the 12th Royal Lancers. He flourished in the regiment, quickly becoming an exceptionally popular officer who made many lasting friendships.

The regiment arrived in North Africa in November 1941, and Wyndham was almost continuously in the desert until September 1942.

In March of that year, while on patrol, he was wounded; and throughout this period he performed reconnaissance movements that, in the words of a senior officer, showed "the utmost dash and gallantry", taking his vehicle as close to the enemy as possible, even though outgunned and suffering from inferior British armour.

On June 7 1942, when Wyndham's squadron was providing reconnaissance for the 22nd Armoured Brigade near the Rigguel ridge, he noticed an enemy concentration south of the ridge, almost entirely hidden.

Spotted by the Germans, Wyndham found himself under heavy shell-fire for some 45 minutes, during which time he managed to gain information about the size of the enemy force and the exact location of its batteries.

For his role in this action Wyndham was awarded an MC, the citation stating that he had shown "exceptional courage and leadership".

Wyndham went on to take part in the Italian campaign and to serve in Palestine. He stayed on in the Army until 1949, before going to work for his cousin, Henry Yorke, in Pontifex, the Yorke family business that made brewing equipment and pipes for bathrooms and lavatories.

What Henry Yorke (who wrote highly regarded novels under the name Henry Green) demanded chiefly from his closest associates was the ability to be entertaining and to drink; when he left the firm it was said that the only object found in the drawers of his desk was a dead pigeon.

Wyndham enjoyed the work and became resigned to the drinking; he was popular at the head office in London and at the factory in Birmingham, and capable of dealing with Yorke's other recruit, the brilliant but bibulous writer Goronwy Rees.

Eventually it became clear that a system that involved the senior directors sitting in a pub from half past eleven most mornings, starting with two pints of beer before moving on to gin, was not suited to commercial realities.

A reorganisation of Pontifex took place, and Wyndham - loyal to Henry - left, to take various jobs. He worked for the airline Silver City and for an insurance broker before, in 1967, becoming chairman of the Children's Society, of which he had been a trustee since 1961.

In this he was following his father, who had been chairman of what was then the Church of England's Children's Society during and immediately after the Second World War.

But the job was now a much bigger one, and Wyndham soon showed that he had exceptional aptitude for it, becoming a tireless ambassador and fundraiser.

Under his chairmanship, the society changed fundamentally from a provider of residential child care in homes, and one of the main adoption agencies in the country, to support for community-based projects that strove to keep families together.

In 1969 the Children's Society's first day-care centre opened in south London; and family centres began to be set up in the 1970s and 1980s to aid single-parent or socially deprived families.

By the society's centenary year in 1981 it had become a pioneer in new ways of working with young people, supported and admired by local authorities throughout the country.

After retiring from the Children's Society in 1982, having been appointed OBE for his work, Wyndham and his second wife, Patricia, founded the 999 Club in 1992 under the inspiration of Father David Diamond, the then rector of Deptford.

By providing drop-in centres, staffed by local people, to offer support and advice to the homeless or the destitute, the club gave hope to many in an area of high social deprivation.

So impressed was the Archbishop of Canterbury that he made his New Year broadcast from the club in 2005.

It was typical of Wyndham's modesty that not even his family knew the full extent either of his charitable work or his war record; none of his children knew to the end exactly how he had won his MC.

What he could not conceal was his completely natural humorous charm, remarkable good looks and very attractive enthusiasm.

He built up an extraordinary number of interests, first in Kent (where he lived with his first wife and his children), then in a cottage in Hampshire and later in his last home at Hammersmith; these ranged from bee-keeping, canals (for years he kept a barge), industrial archaeology and Welsh Mountain sheep, to military history and the making of rag rugs.

He bore his last illness serenely, surrounded by his children, of whom he was immensely proud: the interior designers Jane Churchill and Melissa Wyndham, and his son Henry, the European chairman of Sotheby's.

Mark Wyndham married, in 1947, Ann Winn, with whom he had his three children. The marriage was dissolved in 1986, and in the same year he married Patricia Garnett.
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