DA(Edin) FRIBA FCSD
Former Past President and close friend of the AA Brian Henderson, who was instrumental in securing scholarships and bursaries for AA students, passed away last Thursday 19th June aged 85. Brian graduated from Edinburgh University and obtained a year-long placement with Basil Spence & Partners in 1950, working on designs for the Festival of Britain. He subsequently joined the firm of Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall (YRM) in London, rising to senior partner and eventually chairman of the firm. Within YRM, Brian was in charge of the original buildings for Manchester and Gatwick airports, and smaller projects like the refurbishment of the Michelin Building for Paul Hamlyn and Terence Conran. His most challenging project came in the 1980s, with the design for the Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk, the subject of the largest public inquiry ever seen in the UK. This coincided with the period he served on the AA Council, from 1983, and he was elected AA President in 1987, the same year that construction began at Sizewell B.
Under his Presidency, the AA Council introduced a concept Brian had seen at American universities – the AA Foundation was set up as a separate charity from the AA, with responsibility for safeguarding donations received towards AA scholarships and bursaries. A fundraising campaign for this purpose was carried out in 1988-89. Brian twisted a few arms, persuading people he knew well to become Trustees of the Foundation – his lifelong friend and partner at YRM, David Allford, Lord Alistair McAlpine, Harry Cobb and Alan Leibowitz amongst them – and he attracted many others as donors to the Foundation. After retiring from the AA Council in 1991, Brian continued to support the AA Foundation as a Trustee, and became Chairman of the Trustees from 1999 to 2010, when many of the existing named AA scholarship and bursary funds were established.
A lover of jazz, food and fine wines, Brian certainly knew how to enjoy life to the full, and will be remembered by many partying into the early hours at the Groucho Club after a late night at Ronnie Scotts. A favourite hangover cure of his is still mixed by Soho bartenders as a Dr Henderson. Business, and much else in Brian’s life, took place over lunches that invariably lasted into the late afternoon. His generosity and humour made these legendary – in fact, one of the more contested lots at a charity auction at the Groucho Club, featuring contributions by the likes of Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas, was ‘Lunch with Brian Henderson’. But in contrast to his social life, Brian himself was more than anywhere at home in Wiltshire, with Elizabeth and the family, or in the most remote of locations in the Outer Hebrides, where he spent long summers with family and close friends.
Eternally positive, Brian claimed he was only challenged during the Sizewell B inquiry by his then 13-year old son Fergus, who threatened to get his schoolmates to picket the YRM offices. This is of course the same Fergus Henderson who later studied at the AA, and on his last day of studies announced his decision to become a chef. Brian’s response was “that’s fine son, but ensure you become the best” – and he did. Brian was rightly proud of Fergus’s achievements and rise to international fame, as well as those of his daughter Annabel who has followed his footsteps as an architect. In recognition of his lifelong contribution to the AA, Brian Henderson was made an Honorary Member of the AA in 2009.
