Graham C. Greene, the former managing director of the publishing house Jonathan Cape, and a long-serving trustee of the British Museum, died on 10 October, aged 80. A nephew of the famous novelist (he used his middle initial to avoid confusion), he was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford. He worked for the publisher Secker & Warburg from 1958 before moving to Jonathan Cape in 1962. In 1989 the business was sold to Random House and Greene retired from publishing. He was made a trustee of the British Museum in 1978, sitting on the board for 24 years. As chairman, he was closely involved in building the Norman Foster-designed Great Court, for which, with fellow trustee Claus Moser, he helped raise £110m. He was, however, hurt by widespread criticism when a builder used incorrect stone for the south portico. He also incurred the wrath of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport for refusing to introduce admission charges.
Alison Kelly, the art historian and Coade stone expert, died on 15 August, aged 102. Kelly read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and spent a year at the Liverpool City School of Art. She then took up stage design at the Westminster Theatre and during the Second World War helped technicians to create camouflage. She subsequently lectured on ceramics, and published books on Wedgwood. She spent 17 years researching Coade stone. A mixture of crushed flint, quartz, soda-lime glass and clay, the material was cheaper than natural stone and was used to make architectural members, statuary and ornaments that retained their definition and did not weather or oxidise. It was used on many buildings in England, including St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, Carlton House and Buckingham Palace. In 1990, she published Mrs Coade’s Stone, the definitive account of the subject.
Norman Palmer, an emeritus professor of the law of art and cultural property at University College London (UCL), and the principal academic adviser to the Institute of Art and Law, died on 3 October, aged 68. Palmer was called to the Bar in 1973 and held law professorships at a succession of English universities: Reading, Essex, Southampton and finally UCL. In 1994, he married Ruth Redmond Cooper who, a year later, founded the Institute of Art and Law. Palmer became its academic adviser the following year. His expertise was the law relating to cultural property and other forms of portable wealth. He was an adviser to the UK government on policy and legislation—he was on the ministerial panel on the illicit trade in cultural objects, 2000-05—and to international organisations on making coherent legal agreements, drafting legislation on acquisitions, loans and the sharing of cultural objects, and dispute settlement. He was the author of The Recovery of Stolen Art (1998) and Museums and the Holocaust (2000).
Raine, Countess Spencer, the stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the chatelaine of Althorp, died on 21 October, aged 87. Her father Alexander McCorquodale and her mother Barbara Cartland divorced when she was four. She was active in politics, with special interests in heritage and the environment. She was elected to Westminster Council in 1954 and to London County Council (LCC) in 1958. When the LCC was replaced by the Greater London Council in the Sixties, she was for six years directly involved in town planning and historic buildings. Between 1971 and 1972 she was the chair of the Covent Garden development committee that prevented the razing of the structures in the piazza to make way for high-rise office buildings. After marrying Earl Spencer in 1976 she undertook the restoration of the 17th-century Northamptonshire family seat, Althorp, a project that alienated her four stepchildren, although she and Princess Diana were later reconciled.