Hugh Bredin, who died 10 March, 2024, aged 89, was a croquet player, jazz fan, author, illustrator, pen-and-ink cartoonist, contributor to Punch and Private Eye – and, for more than 30 years, a senior copywriter at some of Britain’s largest advertising agencies, including the American-owned J Walter Thompson...
In 1980 he published The Jeeves Cocktail Book: A Guide to Mixed Drinking. By then his art had already been used to launch the popular new “international intrigue” board game Diplomacy which still flourishes today; the design of the game somehow echoed Bredin’s own flamboyance – especially the loud kipper ties made for him by the celebrated Mayfair boutique owner Mr Fish.
George Richard Hugh Bredin was born 3 March, 1935, on the Wirral Peninsula across the Mersey from Liverpool, a descendant of a Huguenot family who had moved from Bordeaux to Ireland in the 17th century and included Picasso’s long-standing lawyer Jean-Denis Bredin. He was son of George Richard Frederick Bredin, CBE (1899-1983), and his wife the former Dorothy Ellison (1896-1997).
His maternal grandfather, Thomas Richard Ellison (1864-1929), had been president of the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. Hugh’s father George would soon serve as governor of the Blue Nile province in Sudan.
Hugh’s early childhood was spent in the hands of his forthright mother who enjoyed golf, bridge and horse racing and once played tennis in Monaco with Charlie Chaplin.
Hugh began his formal education at Mostyn House, Cheshire. Unusually, his nanny, Miss Mowle, went with him to the prep school – she was given the role of under-matron – and was soon called “Nanny” by the entire school.
Bredin had married in 1957 (div) Mary Gabrielle Drew (born 1936), scion of that landed gentry family, a student at the Oxford Theatre School, daughter of Brigadier Alec Wilson Drew, CBE (1902-1970), and his wife the former Edna Susan Moffitt (1905-65); and married 2ndly, in 1967, Nina Violet Tamara Talbot Rice (1941-2004), daughter of Lieutenant-Col David Talbot Rice, CBE, TD (1903-1972), scion of the Barons Dynevor, by his wife the former Tamara Abelson (1904-1993).
He leaves issue from both marriages.
No comments:
Post a Comment