My friend Michael Pickersgill, who has died aged 76, had a deep commitment to the scouting movement and took dozens of young people on camps all over Europe. Scouting, teaching, the National Liberal Club, the Knights of the Round Table charity and his family were all important to him.
Having joined the scouts as a schoolboy, and become an assistant district commissioner at the age of 25, in 1983 he was made one of Greater London’s county commissioners in scouting. For more than 30 years Michael was also a member of the National Liberal Club (NLC), and its chairman between 2014 and 2017. He was hugely proud to see his name on the board in the foyer, beneath that of William Gladstone, the first chairman.
At that time the Savage Club (a gentleman’s club named after the poet Richard Savage) was based at the NLC in London, which is where l first met Michael. He was so helpful to the Savage Club that we made him an honorary life member and he was always a welcome sight in our clubroom, gin and tonic in hand.
Michael was born in Pimlico, central London, the first child of George Pickersgill, a telephone engineer, and his wife Joan (nee Hunnex). He was educated at the nearby St Michael’s school before the family moved to Chiswick, where he remained for the rest of his life.
His first job was at the old Middlesex Assizes, now the home of the supreme court in Parliament Square, a job that gave him a fund of an anecdotes about the more strident judges who sat there in the late 1960s. But his interest lay in education, and he became a school welfare officer for the old Inner London Education Authority in in 1969 before training as a teacher at Whitelands College in Roehampton (1971-74).
His first teaching job was at the Cardinal Manning School in Kensington, in 1974. A committed Roman Catholic, he became headteacher of St Aloysius’ college in Highgate in 1991. He later joined a management consultancy firm, where he remained until his retirement.
In 2010 he joined the Knights of the Round Table charity. As knight steward from 2015, Michael was responsible for the organisation of their formal dinners and events. Sadly, his health and mobility declined so that he was eventually unable to attend, but he was still arranging events until shortly before his death.
Michael lived with his brother, Mark, who survives him.
