2 THE KEDGE ANCHOR Issue 51— Spring 2019 Educated at Pattinson College and Woodlands Comprehensive (now West Coventry Academy), Coventry, he read economics at Hull 1968-71 and, part-time, for a masters at Birkbeck 1972-75 on the impact of transport rationalisation on land values. His history was self-taught. Warwick was diverted from his intention of joining the Royal Navy for a short service commission by the offer of a job as personal assistant to the left-wing politician and entrepreneur T. Dan Smith. Smith gave Warwick great responsibility, while Warwick learned to network through dealing with Smith’s contacts who were as varied as the union-leader Vic Feather, the musician Yehudi Menuhin, and the then Foreign Secretary George Brown. His specific responsibilities included finding greenfield sites for motorway service stations and the planning application for Sullom Voe oil terminal. Though he believed he knew Smith’s business intimately, he was surprised not to be interviewed by the police after Smith’s arrest on corruption charges and remained convinced that Smith had been made a scapegoat by the establishment. In 1974-85 Warwick joined Legal & General’s investment planning team, ending as head of property research: projects included Landsdowne House and Leadenhall Market. His interests were never numbers, however, but people and while lent to a charity, Action Resource Centre 1985-88, he gained new qualifications in public relations, returning to L&G as business development manager 1988-91 and marketing director 1991-96. Warwick enjoyed champagne and fast cars, but the business world was changing around him and becoming less fun, and in 1995 he set up as a freelance consultant in marketing and communications, initially enjoying some success with Middle Eastern clients. This also enabled him to give more attention to his teenage son, Tom, and gradually, with a variable income, his life-style became more abstemious. He had already been known to put clients and junior colleagues at ease by descriptions, often using the cutlery, of Nelson’s battles, and now with downtime between commissions he was able to give full reign to his enthusiasm for his hero, Nelson. Warwick dated his obsession to 15 March 1957 when, aged 7, he read the last episode of ‘The Life of the Great Sailor’ in The Eagle, and experienced “a quasi-spiritual moment, like a hot knife going through butter”. Over the next 40 years he built a library about Nelson and collected artefacts related to him, but it was not until the 1990s, while showing friends round the Nelson exhiPeter Terence Warwick Was born on 20 December 1949 in Kenilworth where his father was a pioneer aero-engineer who worked with Frank Whittle and on jets from the Gloster Meteor Mk 1 to Concorde. HMS Victory Cutter at King’s Stairs Greenwich during the Emirates Thames Nelson Flotilla, 16 September 2005. Chairman Peter Warwick standing right wears a full dress replica naval captain’s uniform, and Alex Price, as John Richards Lapenotiere between the tossed oars wears a replica lieutenant’s uniform, both made by Keith Levitt at Henry Poole & Co, Savile Row.
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