Pals mourn the king of Centre Court cool, Henman’s dad
HE NEVER sought the spotlight yet, thanks to his unflinching stoicism and self-restraint — displayed each year at Wimbledon — became known to millions, while his loyalty and discretion endeared him to the Prince and Princess of Wales, and, particularly, to Catherine’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton.
All are now mourning Tony Henman, who, I can disclose, died last Friday aged 84, and whose ‘magnificent, inscrutable calm’ while watching his youngest son, Tim, on Centre Court, became, in the words of the Mail’s distinguished late tennis correspondent, Mike Dickson, ‘one of the great British performances of the [Wimbledon] fortnight’.
The uninitiated thought that Henman senior, an Oxford solicitor, was incapable of expressing emotion. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Tony ‘suffer[ed] the tension more than anyone’, being ferociously competitive when playing tennis, squash or cricket for Oxfordshire — but perhaps most of all when on the hockey pitch. Yet friends knew him as a relaxed and sociable companion. ‘He was a lovely guy,’ one of them tells me. ‘He had absolutely no side.’ The combination of affability and discretion was shared by his wife, Jane, ensuring the couple’s advice about how to contend with unsought publicity was immensely valued by the Middleton family — neighbours in Berkshire of Jane’s brother, horse trainer Tim Billington, who died in 2020. The friendship between the two families flourished. Jane became Carole Middleton’s doubles partner, and she and Tony were guests at Catherine and Prince William’s wedding. Those in the Henmans’ home village, Weston-on-the-Green, will mourn him, too. Known affectionately as ‘The Brigadier’, he headed a battle against developers who unveiled plans to dump a so-called ‘eco-village’ of 15,000 houses on a greenfield site in 2008. The plans were rejected. Game, set and match to Henman.