John W. Bryan-Brown

21^st May 1919 - 28^th July 2021

John Willoughby Bryan-Brown (1938) died on 28th July 2021, aged 102. He was born in Clifton, Bristol, on 21st May 1919, the son, grandson and great-grandson of Church of England clergymen.
He came up to Queens’ in 1938 from Marlborough College, to read French and German. He greatly enjoyed his membership of the Officers’ Training Corps and represented Queens’ at cross-country running and hockey. In autumn 1940, after his first two academic years at Queens’, the war required his service and he attended an Officer Cadet Training Unit at Droitwich, after which he was commissioned 2nd lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment. He was posted with 2nd bn Princess Louise’s Kensington Regiment in Aldershot and later with the London Irish Rifles in Elstree. In the latter part of the war he worked at the Inter-Services Topographical Department, based at Manchester College, Oxford.
After the war he joined the Central Office of Information, successor to the wartime Ministry of Information and the department responsible for all government publicity and information services. He spent his whole career there, working in different parts of the organisation, including Films Division and Reference Division. It was at COI that he met his wife Betty, with whom he had one daughter, Jennifer.
From a very early age, his great love was of nature, most of all birds, fostered by having grown up in fine country Rectories with large gardens and easy access to surrounding countryside. He was also a keen gardener. He was a devoted husband and father, kind, gentle, patient and loving. Those qualities, and his courtesy, meant that many who knew him described him as a “perfect English gentleman”. His wife died in 2014 and he is survived by their daughter Jennifer.

Jennifer Bryan-Brown
September 2021