David Andrew Turner

David Andrew Turner was born in Cambridge on 18th June 1938. His father, James William Cecil Turner, was a distinguished writer on Roman and criminal law, Fellow and Bursar of Trinity Hall, and Senior Proctor of the university, and his mother, Beatrice Maud Stooke, was a nurse and physiotherapist. 

Raised in the family home at Girton, David enjoyed the run of the University Farm and the surrounding countryside, which fostered his lifelong love of nature and animals. In 1940, David, along with his mother and five siblings, was evacuated to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, before returning home in 1942. He then attended St Colet’s school in Tennyson Road and St Faith’s, before winning a scholarship to Tonbridge School in Kent. 

David went up to Queens’ to study Law in 1956, where he was hockey goal keeper for the college first eleven and a member of the Cuppers-winning team of 1959-60, and made some lifelong friends. 

In 1959 in his third long vacation, he journeyed under the auspices of The Canada Club to work in British Columbia, opening up a lifelong interest in travel. In 1960 David went to South Africa where he worked for Webber Wentzel Hofmeyer & Turnbull in Johannesburg, before taking up a place as the Assistant De Droit Anglais at the Institut de Droit Comparé at the University of Paris. 

This was followed by time in Turin at the Istituto di Studi Europei, and additional comparative law experiences in Madrid, which included two trips to Iran in the days of the Shah, and Helsinki, where he crossed over the border to Leningrad, at the time a rare opportunity to see inside Soviet Russia.

Returning to Cambridge, David undertook his solicitors exams, having been offered a role with Coward Chance in London. Soon another opportunity emerged for studies abroad via the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst and he set off for a comparative law placement in Cologne, later transferring to the Justice Ministry in Düsseldorf. 

David then joined law firm Herbert Smith in London, and International Nickel in 1969, with a job that eventually took him back to Paris, before returning to London with further roles as in-house legal counsel at Mobil and BP, where he worked until 2000. 

Throughout his life, David enjoyed spending time with his family, renovating furniture, DIY, cooking, gardening, and growing fruit and vegetables. In retirement, he also restarted his childhood hobby as a budgerigar fancier, going on to win numerous awards for his birds and serving as president of the South Midlands Budgerigar Society.

A loving husband and father, David is survived by his wife Anne, and his three sons, Jethro, Matt and Zac.