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Nick and I hardly knew one another at school - I was in the year above him. However thirty years after I left, I made contact with him having re-read in the 1952 Lancing Magazine, that in the 1952 Lancing v Ardingly Boxing match, he and I were the only Lancing victors. We eventually met up as OLs in the early 1990s when he was living with one of his sisters in Richmond and immediately got on well.
Nick and his twin sister were born in Tel Aviv where their father was Regional Manager for Barclays. The family relocated to Luxor and then Gibraltar where Nick spent most of his childhood when not at Newell's Prep School (now Handcross Park Prep School) and later Lancing.
Nick and I often talked about Lancing for which he also felt great affection. He told me, modestly, that had it not been for Frank Doherty, Lancing’s then Head Master who taught him Classics, he would never have gone to up Christ Church, Oxford, because Doherty had a strong lien to his old College and engineered him a place there. At Oxford Nick was awarded a half blue for swimming and was Chairman of the Poseidon Club. He had a lasting affection for Oxford University Swimming Club and in 1998 he co-founded with Martin Davies, the Varsity Cross-Channel Swimming Competition which he continued to organise, in addition to fundraising for OUSC, virtually right up to his death.
From 1956-1957 Nick had splendid times in Malaya with the Queen’s Royal Regiment and established abiding friendships. After he left the Army he was given the much sought-after job of Marketing Manager for Reckitt and Colman in the West Indies, a job that ideally suited his sound brain and excellent way with people. Nick made the most of the opportunity and regaled me with tales of blue seas and warm waters, and how much there was to see in that fascinating group of Islands, each a day’s sailing by steamship from the next!
From 2005 Nick lived in Midhurst where he was elected a Chichester District Councillor 2007-2018, and also served as Chairman. His brief covered sport and the arts with one of his roles being to ‘supervise’ The Chichester Festival Theatre on behalf of the County Council. Nick was massively keen on sport and spent much of his leisure time following athletics, cricket and football. He regretted that, amidst the wide range of sports offered today at Lancing, athletics appeared to be less popular with pupils than it had been in the days of ‘Monkey’ Chamberlain and the brilliant Lancing athletics team of the 1950s. Sadly, the spirit to do things away from Midhurst seemed to have left him about two years before he died and our car trips to Lancing ceased.
Nick had such a full and varied life and entered everything he did with great energy and infectious enthusiasm - he really felt he had done all he wanted to in life. He was an immensely proud father of Guy and Lucinda, a loving grandfather, and truly one of the best of pals. He is sorely missed.
Dickie Dutton (Sanderson’s 1949-1953)
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