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Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

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Brian was born on 6 January 1925, in London. Beginning in 1943, aged 18,<br />

Brian served in the RAF as a pilot, earning a commission in Transport<br />

Command by 1947. In 1949, he earned a BA, and, by 1951, his MA.Through<br />

the late 1940s and early 1950s, Brian was not only a student and a soldier, but<br />

also engaged in the 1948 Olympic Games Organising Committee and in the<br />

Colonial Development Corporation before working for the Seismograph<br />

Service Ltd and Seismograph Service Italiana, based in Rome.<br />

In the decade 1959 to 1969, Brian fostered two lifelong passions. One was his<br />

career in psychotherapy. After work with the Wellcome Foundation, Brian<br />

earned a position as Hon. Psychotherapist at Farnborough Hospital in Kent in<br />

1976. That position proved to be part <strong>of</strong> an admirable career as Brian<br />

distinguished himself at several other institutions including the Penelope Lady<br />

Balock Psychotherapy Trust, London; <strong>University</strong> <strong>College</strong>, Cork; and Holistic<br />

Education and Research Trust, Cumbria. Some <strong>of</strong> his greatest pr<strong>of</strong>essional<br />

contributions include chairing the Association for Group and Individual<br />

Psychotherapy (AGIP) from 1978 to 1980, and founding the South London<br />

Psychotherapy Centre. One <strong>of</strong> his psychotherapy colleagues believed that Brian<br />

embodied the philosophy <strong>of</strong> relating to patients with authenticity and<br />

imagination by cultivating wisdom, compassion, and love. This colleague<br />

reflected that Brian,“with his deep, sonorous voice, his elliptical comments, and<br />

carefully chosen words … would invariably bring a new perspective to others,<br />

inviting them to see their predicaments within a large, and <strong>of</strong>ten mythical frame.<br />

He enabled others to move forward with life-changing insight”.<br />

Yet Brian was not only a world-class psychotherapist. In the 1960s, Brian took<br />

a course in metalworking at London’s Central School <strong>of</strong> Arts & Crafts, after<br />

which he set up The Wild Goose Studio with his long-time friend Kathleen<br />

Smyth. In a coastal town in County Cork, the Studio began to make faithful<br />

reproductions <strong>of</strong> Celtic artefacts in bronze and cast iron. For nearly two<br />

decades, this studio survived rather as a cottage industry. However, when Brian<br />

moved to Ireland permanently in 1987, he devoted more time to the Studio<br />

and realised his vision <strong>of</strong> inspiring his customers’ imaginations through a<br />

fusion <strong>of</strong> image and idea on a larger scale, and soon was exporting pieces<br />

throughout the UK and the USA. In the mid-1990s, Wild Goose Studio grew<br />

203<br />

OBITUARIES

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