Alleyn Club Newsletter 2013

secretary-general of the British branch of the Foreign Legion Association, and was appointed an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 2001 and promoted to Commander in 2011. He was also a keen freemason and a member of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, a dining club founded in the 18th century. He married a Royal Signals 2nd lieutenant, Maureen McCabe, in 1964 and they had two daughters, but the marriage was later dissolved. In 1982 he married Linda Wood and they had a son and two more daughters. He is survived by Linda and all five of his children. An obituary appeared in The Daily Telegraph on which this is based.

him a special case, and he passed out top of his course at Mons officer cadet school. Tony was commissioned into the 7th Gurkha Rifles (Duke of Edinburgh’s Own) and posted first to Malaya. In early 1963 he was sent on to Brunei, Sarawak and Borneo in turn to fight in the Indonesian Confrontation. After nearly a year fighting in the heat and humidity of Indonesia, he wanted to convert to a regular Army commission but he was too old to do this in the Infantry. He discovered that the age limit was higher in the Royal Artillery (RA) so he transferred to them in early 1964, and remained in Borneo serving as a forward observation officer until 1966, when he returned to the UK once more. As an artillery officer, he attended Staff College at Camberley in 1969-70 and then served in 45 Regiment RA before moving to 3 Royal Horse Artillery in Hong Kong. From 1975 to 1977 he was on the directing staff of the junior division of the Staff College at Warminster and then was offered command of 23 Special Air Services (SAS) Regiment, a Territorial Army (TA) unit, which was unusual for an officer without British special forces experience. His achievements at 23 SAS were so highly regarded that he remained in command of the regiment until 1983, although the sensitivity of their work during this period means that few details can be published, even now. From 1983 to 1986 he was a senior staff officer at NATO headquarters and a special forces advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and he was appointed OBE. After retiring from the Army as a colonel, Tony became commander of the Sultan of Oman’s special forces as a brigadier, where he was responsible for more than doubling numbers in the Sultan’s special forces to over 2,000 and for improving their equipment and training. He was presented with the Omani Order of Achievement by Sultan Qaboos in 1995. He retired from the Sultan’s service in 1997, and in 1998-99 he helped verify the crumbling ceasefire in the former Yugoslav region of Kosovo, and then became head of security for the Aga Khan. After the NATO invasion of Iraq in 2003, he became head of security for the Programme Management Office (PMO), which was involved in managing the distribution of billions of dollars of funds to reconstruction projects in Iraq. He was later responsible for the security plans of US aid in Afghanistan, and was an accomplished lecturer on leadership and security issues. Tony Hunter-Choat was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Freeman of the City of London. He was a former president and

Peter John Papaloizou (Loizos) (1948-56) 17.05.1937 – 02.03.2012

Peter Papaloizou was born in Bexleyheath in 1937 to a Greek Cypriot father and Irish mother. Following his parents’ early separation, he was raised by his mother but the Second World War

played havoc with his primary school education, and after many changes of home address and school, he left New Park Road School in Streatham to come to Dulwich on a scholarship. He moved on to St John’s College, Cambridge, to read English and graduated with a First. He then went to America, where he first spent a year at Harvard, developing an interest in film-making and then ‘dropped out’ to complete a masters degree in Communications at Pennsylvania University. He changed his surname to Loizos in 1962 when he was working as a film writer and producer in Philadelphia. After four years in America, he returned to Britain and spent two years with the BBC, mainly making science documentaries. After his mother’s death, he embarked on a personal trip in 1966 to Argaki, his estranged father’s village in Cyprus where he was warmly welcomed by his ‘new’ extended family, despite the fact he spoke no Greek. On his return to Britain he learned modern Greek and enrolled as a graduate student at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Two years later, in 1968, he returned to Argaki to conduct research for his PhD into the effect of the arrival of politics on the village. After completing his PhD, he was appointed as a lecturer at LSE, where he spent the rest of his career. He was head of the department and an emeritus professor in the last few years. He continued to

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