Obituaries
School in Frankfurt and was in Grenville and Blew House. After leaving the College, he went to study at Northampton Polytechnic (now City University) in London. During World War Two he was a Private in the Pioneer Corps, before transferring to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), and he also changed his last name to Lynfield in 1940. After the war ended, he graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1946, and joined the ICI patents department in Billingham in the same year, becoming a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents in 1950. Also in 1950, he emigrated to America, and joined law firm Langner, Parry, Card & Langner in New York as a patent attorney. He was awarded an LLB law degree the New York University Law School in 1958 and became a partner in Ladas & Parry (New York) in 1966, rising to Senior Partner before his retirement in 1981. After retirement from legal work, he embarked on a second career of sculpting, painting and writing, including histories of places in Connecticut and Florida, and of remarkable families. Geoffrey and his wife, Hansi, were happily married for 65 years, and had two sons, Peter and Michael (69- 74), and one daughter, the late Jacqueline, and he was proud grandfather to six grandchildren. Michael, the Alleyn Club’s representative in New York, contributed to this obituary. Richard ‘Dickie’ Nancarrow came to Dulwich from St Michael’s School in Southfields as part of the Gilkes Experiment and was in Drake. He cut a unique figure among the cloisters of the College. Always favouring black pinstripe trousers to the usual grey of his contemporaries, he was tall yet had the premature stoop of an academic, or in his case, a jazz buff. He started the Modern Rhythm Society and was its Secretary for three years. The Society met regularly in the North Block, crouching around a portable record player, discussing the merits of trumpeters Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong, and trombonists Kid Ory and Jack Teagarden, for example. There were cries of ‘foul’ when Bruce Turner, OA, edged out Bud Freeman in the saxophone category. After leaving Dulwich, Dickie did his National Service with the RAF and from there went into banking. He held quite a senior position with the Westminster Bank in High Street, Kensington, when he decided to change direction. He moved into advertising space sales with IPC Magazines in Manchester and later had his own business in that field. He had two near misses on the marital front, but was still known in his later years to be living in a four-bedroomed house in a smart Manchester suburb. Behind the façade of an earnest single businessman ploughing a lonely furrow, lurked a sought-after and accomplished jazz drummer. Dickie would take his drumkit far and wide, even back to Richard David Nancarrow (1948-54) 15.09.1937 – 20.04.2013
the College for the memorable OA rugby centenary fundraising party in 1998. His humour and wit was expressed through his drumming, through rimshots, explosions and paradiddles that forced the toes to tap and heart to soar. He was a happy and very good drummer who is really missed by many. John Izod (46-53) contributed this obituary.
Peter Ashley Robertson Niven (1948-56) 03.03.1938 – 07.03.2013
Peter Niven was born in St Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London as the eldest son of a City of London Police detective. He entered the College from Dulwich Hamlet Primary School, was in Spenser and soon excelled at sport. He played in
the College’s first ever hockey team and was captain of hockey the following year. He played fullback for the 1st XV in his final year, when he also captained an unbeaten 2nd XI cricket team, for whom he bowled off-breaks and was a very good slip fielder. He captained Carver House, when the pavilion had to house younger boarders soon after the Second World War and subsequently captained Blew House. He was also gifted academically, winning a State Scholarship and an Open Exhibition in Natural Sciences to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Again he excelled at sport but also returned to London with a fine degree. He was initially at the Samaritan and Queen Charlotte’s hospitals, but then returned to Bart’s as Senior Registrar. This was also where he met a nurse, Peta, and they spent 48 happily married years together. He trained to become a gynaecologist while at Bart’s, gaining FRCS and FRCOG degrees. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists awarded him an Eden Fellowship in 1973 to go to Miami to study human placental lactogen. He became a consultant, first in Newcastle and then in Bristol. The Royal College writes: ‘He quickly established a reputation as an outstanding doctor, noted not only for his skill as a surgeon and obstetrician, but also for his warmth and humanity. His seemingly boundless interest and concern for his patients and the staff with whom he worked was legendary. All his nursing, midwifery and medical colleagues wanted Peter to look after them in their pregnancies.’ Immaculately dressed and often wearing an OA tie, he had many interests. He played rugby for Clifton in Bristol and was a keen golfer and skier. With three contemporary OAs, he rowed the length of the River Thames, raising money for a school bursary, and they were welcomed by the Master at the College boathouse in Putney. He lectured regularly in Bristol on Sir Ernest Shackleton, OA, whose grave he visited in South Georgia. The much loved elder brother of Colin (52-60) and Alastair (54-63),, with whom he overlapped at school, he was, in the words of the former President of the Alleyn Club, Brigadier Walker, ‘revered by everyone’. One of Peter’s younger brothers, Colin, contributed this obituary.
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