Lance Thirkell
Lance Thirkell (Lancelot George Allnut Thirkell). Third and apparently favourite son of Angela Thirkell by her second husband, the Australian George Thirkell. Born and growing up there with his two step-brothers, Graham and Colin MacInnes, he returned to England with his mother in 1929.
Educated at Colet Court and St Paul's, and Magdalen College, Oxford, he was at first with the Foreign Office behind the Iron Curtain until forced to resign owing to ill-health, when he joined the BBC at the Aldwych.
After a long career in the Overseas Service, on retirement he turned his energies to fund-raising for the New Bridge Association for befriending ex-offenders, of which he has both secretary and administrator. He also served on the boards of several other charitable and educational bodies.
Efficient, hardworking but idiosyncratic, he married Kate Lowinsky in 1946 and had four children, Georgiana, Serena, Robert and Thomas. He was concerned to maintain the literary memory of his mother, whose reputation had declined after her death as had that of her Pre-Raphaelite painter grandfather, Sir Edward Burne-Jones.