Memorial Service James Hughes-onslow
A successful City financier, Michael Heathcoat Amory made a lot of money as a founder of Jupiter Asset Management with John Duffield, former husband of the philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield. But his great enthusiasm was the arboretum for oak trees and magnolias he established in Devon.
Tony Kirkham, head of the arboretum at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, spoke of Michael’s passion at his memorial service in St Luke’s Church in Chelsea. ‘Mention “quercophile” to any national or international dendrologist and they will immediately think of Michael,’ he said. ‘In the back of his mind he wanted a collection that would rival his good friend and rival collector Michael Heseltine’s.’ (Lord Tarzan was in the congregation.)
Kirkham described the quercetum in Devon as the ‘largest and most comprehensive oak collection in the UK and probably the world’. He said he first met Heathcoat Amory in 1992 when he, Kirkham, was setting off for Taiwan to collect plants for Kew. Heathcoat Amory asked if he would be going to the Taroko Gorge because he needed some acorns from an endemic evergreen oak. ‘The
Taiwanese guides were impressed by my knowledge of the flora of the gorge and soon took me to a small grove of evergreen trees which I quickly identified as Quercus tarokoensis.’
After Michael Heathcoat Amory’s father, David, died in 1944, his mother, Sonia, married his cousin, another Heathcoat-amory, this time confusingly a hyphenated one. Michael’s younger half-brother David Heathcoat-amory, the former Tory MP, told how Michael was always bigger than him and better at games, football, rowing, tennis, skiing and even fishing for salmon.
‘In all his endeavours Michael showed absolute integrity and masses of common sense,’ said David. He went on to describe how Michael was struck by Parkinson’s disease.
‘Although this savage disease weakened his body, it never broke his spirit. One of the mental images I have of Michael is of him driving his buggy along that sloping and rather muddy bank to his oaks, with me clinging on precariously and pretending I wouldn’t rather walk. Then, on arrival, he would clamber out and deal with some errant oak with a huge pair of pruning shears, which was the only tool he could use in recent years.
‘He lies now in the red earth of Devon, in the family plot in Chevithorne churchyard. And, just like his oak trees, his reputation will grow.’
‘Michael was a successful schoolboy,’ said his Eton contemporary Johnny Polk. ‘He was above average academically but he was probably better known as a sporting god. He was an incorrigible gossip and, according to his son Edward, was pathologically unable to keep a secret. I put it down to his generous nature.’
Ludo, Lily, Sam and Zac Heathcoat Amory wrote some reflections on their grandfather’s country pleasures, which were read by Ludo and Lily. His son Edward read ‘After Moonless Midnight’ by Ted Hughes. Lord Heseltine was quoted in the programme as saying: ‘Michael’s name will live over the centuries in the legacy he leaves at Chevithorne Barton. It is, without question, one of the great horticultural achievements of our time.’