[Arthur] Bamber Gascoigne, CBE, FRSL 1935-2022

 [Arthur] Bamber Gascoigne, CBE, FRSL, who died 8 February, 2022, was an English television presenter and author. He was a scion of the Gascoigne landed gentry family. He was the original quizmaster on University Challenge, which initially ran from 1962 to 1987.

Gascoigne was born in London on 24 January 1935. He was the elder son of Lieutenant-Colonel Derek Ernest Frederick Orby Gascoigne [1905-72] (himself the son of Brigadier-General Sir Ernest Frederick Orby Gascoigne and Laura Cicely, daughter of General Edward Henry Clive, of that family of Styche Hall, Shropshire, from which also came the famous soldier and administrator of India Robert Clive by his marriage in 1934 to Mary ("Midi") Louisa Hermione O'Neill [born 19 Aug, 1905], a daughter of Captain the Hon. Arthur O'Neill and Lady Annabel Hungerford Crewe-Milnes.

His great-grandfathers included Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe, and Edward O'Neill, 2nd Baron O'Neill. He was a nephew of Sir Julian Gascoigne, who was in charge of the Household Division during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, and of Terence O'Neill, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland 1963–1969. He was a direct descendant of the 18th-century Lord Mayor of London Sir Crisp Gascoyne and the Tory politicians Bamber Gascoyne (the elder) and Isaac Gascoyne. Isaac's son General Ernest Frederick Gascoyne, of Raby Hall, Liverpool (1796–1867),[2] was his great-great-great-grandfather.

Gascoigne was born in London and educated at Sunningdale School in Berkshire before winning scholarships to both Eton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1955), where he read English literature.While at Magdalene he wrote a musical, Share My Lettuce, which was produced in London in 1957 by Michael Codron, and performed by Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams (with music by Keith Statham and Patrick Gowers). He then spent a year as a Commonwealth Fund scholar at Yale University (1958–59). After National Service in the Grenadier Guards, he became a theatre critic. He met his wife, Christina, at Cambridge, and they married in 1965.

-=-