Sir Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William Towneley, KCVO, KCSG, JP, who died 11 November, 2022, aged 100, was an author who served as Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire, 1976–1997. He was High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1971.
He was born 14 December, 1921, as Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William Koch de Gooreynd, son of Colonel Alexander Louis Wynand Koch de Gooreynd (1899-1985), and his wife the former Priscilla Cecilia Maria Worsthorne Reyntiens (1899-1991), a granddaughter of the 7th Earl of Abingdon.
At a young age he assumed the surname of Worsthorne in lieu of his patronymic. A younger brother, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne (1923-1920), was the writer, journalist and sometime editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
During the Second World War, Worsthorne served in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, receiving a commission as a second lieutenant in December 1942. In 1954 (under the name Simon Towneley Worsthorne) he published Venetian Opera in the 17th Century, a seminal study of the field, which played a significant role in the remarkable revival of the Venetian opera repertory in the latter 20th century.
On 18 January, 1955, he changed his surname again, and assumed the name of Towneley in lieu of Worsthorne. In the same year he married Mary Fitzherbert (1935-2001), scion of the Fitzherbert-Brockholes landed gentry family, daughter of Cuthbert Fitzherbert-Brockholes (1899-1975), and his wife the former Barbara Maria Manuela Scrope (1903-1975), scion of that ancient landed family, by whom he had issue, a son, Peregrine Henry (born 1962), and five daughters, Alice, Katharine, Victoria, Cosima and Frances.
He was appointed KCVO in the 1994 New Years Honours list.
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