Distinguished Old Framlinghamians

Is a renowned artist who has exhibited his work all over the world, including Europe, USA, Hong Kong, South America and in the UK.

He qualified as an accountant and spent many years as a tax specialist at Grant Thornton in Hong Kong before moving to become Head of Tax at Equity Trust, still based in Hong Kong. However, he is far more distinguished as a famous collector of Chinese textiles and his collection is considered the foremost private collection of its kind in the world. In early 2024 he gave his collection of Japanese textiles to the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore, where they organised an exhibition of his amazing collection of Japanese Fukusa.  Then at the end of 2024 he signed an agreement to donate his much more significant Chinese textile collection to the Hong Kong Palace Museum.  This collection is one of the best of its type in the world and is valued in the agreement in excess of $60m.

Prior to retiring he was CEO of TVC News in Nigeria, having previously been founding Managing Director of TV station Al Jazeera International, which broadcasts a global English language service. His previous experience spans 30 years in the media business gained from his roles at BBC Radios 1-4, BBC World Service Radio and WTN (Worldwide Television News). Following retirement he has written a book entitled “Manouche – Living with the Gypsies of France” which was published in August 2019 and another “Three Lives” published in 2023.

For over 30 years he has been an ecologist, film maker, writer and artist. After leaving the College he went to Great Yarmouth College of Art and Design, followed by Leicester Polytechnic. He then got a job as a Production Assistant in the RSPB Film Unit, before joining the British Antarctic Survey in 1975 as a Biological Assistant. Since 1977 he has been self-employed. He was Wildlife Illustrator of the Year in 1983 and Bird Illustrator of the Year in 1984. He was elected President of the Society of Wildlife Artists in 1994, serving 10 years. He has also been Visiting Lecturer at the RCA.

He was a landscape artist based in New South Wales, Australia and was the son of distinguished OF Wing Cdr George Peter Brett Bailey (K34-38).

His influences range from the romantic landscape painting tradition of Europe, including Turner, Samuel Palmer and the Ancients to Chinese Literati painting and Japanese individualists. He created his own way of making vivid and plausible the phenomena and experiences of the natural world. It was an attempt to capture the essential meaning of the subject with forms deriving from his own unavoidable ideas and feelings about the subject. In his work, he reinvented and appropriated many Asian techniques by including titanium mica in his pigments, creating a range of reflective lustres and the inclusion of ‘weather’ in his images.

He was born on 25 January 1947 and died on 30 June 2022 in Woonona, NSW.

He was an outstanding guitarist and songwriter who recorded several albums from the early 1970s onwards and toured the UK and Europe as a solo performer, as well as with the band Canton Trigg. His guitar style was unique, using complex harmonies and rhythms in non-standard tunings.  He also repaired instruments and built harp guitars, making his first guitar in 1968.

Organ Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge where he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO). In 1969 he was appointed Reader in Music at the Open University and a couple of years later became founding Professor of Music, a position he held until his retirement from the university in 1990. Some 40 of his compositions are published and he continues to performed widely in England and abroad as organist and harpsichordist.

He emigrated to Canada shortly after leaving the College and then later to America. He was a Quantity Surveyor by trade. However, his passion was modelling, initially model railways, before becoming fascinated with modelling historical miniature figures and ships. See link for pictures of some of his wonderful work.

After attending Pembroke College, Cambridge has become a prize-winning poet. He is one of an illustrious line of poets to go to Pembroke College, including Spenser, Grey, Smart and Ted Hughes. He is an 8 times winner of the Seatonian Prize and has strong links with Suffolk natural history. He died on 17 July 2010 aged 80.

He has had a hugely varied career, both here and abroad. For a number of years he was an actor both in the UK and in America and during that time met and acted with the likes of Dirk Bogarde and Leslie Phillips. See attached for his detailed life story that was published a few years ago in a number of instalments in the Overseas Bag.