Antony Anderson, father of Nicholas Anderson (Thirlestaine, 1978) and grandfather of Thomas Overbury (Southwood, 2008), died on 26 September 2025, aged 89. The following has been written by Antony’s son, Nicholas.

One afternoon in the autumn of 1945 a small boy stopped in Naunton Lane to watch some other boys playing rugger on the other side of the railings. The game looked like great fun. That evening he asked his father if he could go to the same school. His father, a GP who had just received a modest salary rise, agreed and the boy, Antony Shirras Anderson, who had been born in Hornsey in North London in 1935, started at the Junior a few days later.

He very much enjoyed his time at College. He especially liked competitive team sport. To his enduring chagrin he never quite made the first XI at cricket or hockey, playing at best in the second or third teams. But he captained the House hockey and cricket teams. Indeed he was captain of the first Day Boy team to win Pots after the war. He was, however, a poor scholar. He was obliged to re-take his A levels at the technical college to secure the grades necessary for admission to Barts, where he planned to study medicine in order to become a GP like his father.

Once at Barts, however, he devoted too much time to hockey and cricket and not, as he ruefully noted many years later, medicine. Consequently, he failed the second year. Twice. On the second occasion he was obliged to abandon reveries of a career in medicine. He returned to Cheltenham and married Janet, a girl who he had met at a Christmas party while still at College and with whom he had fallen in love. Then, unable to put off the evil day any longer, he reported for National Service. It wasn’t such a baneful turn of affairs. He passed out of Mons Officer Cadet School as senior under officer, an achievement of which he was inordinately proud for the rest of his life. He spent the second year in Nigeria, eventually becoming aide-de-camp to the governor, mostly occupied with organizing cocktail parties.

After National Service, with a wife and son to provide for and another child on the way, he urgently needed a job. Preferring one with a car, he obtained a position as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. He was good at the work and, swapping pharmaceuticals for marketing material and exhibition stands, he rose to become sales director and eventually the managing director of a company in Gloucester. A successful businessman, he eventually ran his own company. The perks of his work included travel, often to glamorous cities in Europe, and entertaining clients. He was fond of travel. His salary enabled him to afford holidays in exotic locations such as South America and South Africa.

Sport continued to be one of his favourite pastimes. He played cricket for various local teams and hockey for Cheltenham’s Lansdown Hockey Club. In the 1970s he took up squash. In retirement he played golf every week with a group of friends from the village outside Gloucester where he and Janet lived and, when even this proved too onerous, he took up croquet. His last years were hard, but he bore the twin afflictions of Alzheimer’s disease and osteoporosis with fortitude and good humour.

He died following a short illness on 26 September, 2025. He leaves his wife, Janet, son, Nicholas Shirras Anderson (Thirlestaine, 1978), daughter, Fiona Jane Overbury, grandson, Thomas Overbury (Southwood, 2008), granddaughter, Tessa Claire Mitchell, and great-grandson, Felix Thomas Mitchell.