Brian Toyn, aged 89, previously of Biddenham, Bedford, died on Friday October 4th, 2024, in Huntingdon. Brian was born in Rotherham, Yorkshire, the middle son of the late William (“Bill”) Toyn and Doris Westnidge. While he was still a baby, the family moved to Bristol, where he grew up with his brothers Rex and Richard. Nevertheless, one could detect the Yorkshireman rather than the Bristolian in his speech. As a child during the war, he was evacuated to Pontypridd in Wales after the family home in Allison Road was made uninhabitable due to bomb damage. This explains how he learned to sing “London Bridge is Falling Down” in Welsh! Brian attended the Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital School where he developed a life-long love of sports. While at school, he won colours for outstanding performance in four different sports: rugby, cricket, swimming, and athletics – a rare achievement not seen every year at the school, for which he was awarded the “Blake cup”. He also sang in a school Gilbert & Sullivan operatic production as “Bill Bobstay” in “HMS Pinafore”. Sunday mornings were spent at Cathedral School where lessons were in the Lord Mayors Chapel and the uniform was a long gown and yellow socks. 

He met his wife-to-be, Diana, at the University of Bristol through folk dancing, which led to their storied travels touring with a dance troupe to the spring festivals in the Harz mountains, Germany. He would often recount incidents from this time, such as hitchhiking across Germany with a lorry driver who fell asleep at the wheel and the experiences of travelling in the Rolls Royce Phantom 1, owned and driven by their troupe leader. This vehicle had what Brian called a “shooting brake” body that could squeeze in 14 people! At the same time, he spent much time pursuing his sporting interests, playing rugby with the Old Elizabethans from his schooldays. He always treasured a group photo of the team from 1954 when they won the Bristol & District Rugby Football Seven-a-Side Tournament. Brian was also a Morris dancer in the dance troupe, confounding his rugby team with such a non-rugby-like pass time – his rugby pals first found out about his folk dancing when they saw a clip of Brian and Diana dancing together on BBC TV! 

After graduating from Bristol with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, his National Service brought him again to Germany, in Gütersloh, as well as Catterick Garrison in his native Yorkshire. That’s where he learned to drive, a timely skill that allowed him to commute from Yorkshire to Ipswich at weekends to be together with Diana, who was teaching at Ipswich High School. The first car, a Lanchester, was purchased using Diana’s savings. With a top speed of 50 miles-per-hour and partly made of wood, this car and the long journeys may have fostered Brian’s impatience with slow drivers. The other skill he learned there was Bridge. For many decades, this card game became a regular fixture of many convivial get-togethers with friends, in particular the Walters and the Casses. 

Brian’s initial career in industrial chemistry quickly leapt from Huddersfield to Scotland, working for ICI, and to Barry, in South Wales, working for a company called “Distillers”. After a few years in Barry, he moved the growing family to Bedford, switching from chemistry to take the post of lecturer in the MBA program at Cranfield School of Management. The family eventually settled in the village of Biddenham where Brian and Diana lived for nearly 50 years. This house revealed his expertise as plumber, electrician, painter, carpenter, builder, landscaper, and gardener, renovating the house with central heating, a new kitchen, and new bathrooms, as well as transforming the old apple orchard into a garden full of shrubs, flowers, berries, vegetables, and water features. He learned to ring the church bells, eventually taking on the responsibility of tower captain at St. James Church and training the next generation of bell ringers. Leveraging his home-improvement skills, Brian even helped to install two new bells in the church tower, completing the peal of eight after a wait of two centuries. In a blast from the past, one of the bell ringers mentioned that many decades previously he had once borrowed and taken a holiday trip in the same Rolls Royce of Brian’s folk dancing days! Despite all this activity, Brian often played golf at the nearby Bedfordshire Golf Club and was making steady progress on his handicap until stymied by a foot injury sustained while gardening. He nevertheless remained an avid golfer for many decades. You may well ask how it was possible for Brian to make time for so many pursuits? His secret: he stayed up late and rose early – five hours of sleep were more than enough for an early round of golf. During the children’s visits home in later years, coffee, toast, and of course Marmite, were always ready on the table no matter how early one appeared. It’s a pity none of the children seem to have inherited his “late-to-bed-early-to-rise” gene!

Education was a top family priority for which his three children will always be grateful, and this was supplemented by visits to National Trust properties all over the country, and many family trips to Norfolk or the Lake District, as well as several summer holidays driving across the Alps to Italy in a silver Ford Cortina complete with his self-made blue wooden box on its roof. He was very keen on classical music and greatly encouraged the music lessons and participation of his three children in the various school music ensembles and county youth orchestras. He regularly attended musical performances in Bedford and amassed an extensive collection of classical recordings. Mozart was his favorite. 

After retiring at age 54, there followed a successful career as a management consultant, for example, guiding Avis in the optimal buying, selling, and renting of cars. This phase gradually transitioned to years of world-wide excursions with Diana, where they visited more than 20 countries across four continents. His long-dreaded fear of heart trouble emerged in his fifties but turned out to be unrelated to the angina that had taken his father at about the same age. The family remembers visiting Brian in Papworth hospital the day after his open-heart surgery expecting to find a sick man in a bed. Well, nothing of the sort: he was standing in the corridor welcoming visitors with a big grin! No doubt we can thank his athletic training for this extraordinary resilience. When he reached 60, he said he had never expected to live that long. 

In addition to playing golf and following many other sports, he was always interested in the natural world, particularly bird watching about which he knew a lot. David Attenborough was a big favorite – Brian collected all the TV series and was ever ready to enthuse about what he had learned. Even in the single room of his final days in Huntingdon, when he could not easily get outside, he kept a spotter scope by the window so that he could watch the various animals outside and the trees growing across the parking lot. His unflinching positive attitude despite the painful and debilitating condition of his legs was instructive to us all, showing how to make the best of difficult circumstances – visiting Diana downstairs in her room, enjoying movies, listening to music, following the news, watching the Olympics, joining in the entertainments at Hunters Down care home, getting to know and chatting with everyone, etc. After a final meal of shepherd’s pie, he fell into a deep and peaceful sleep that lasted several days until he quietly stopped breathing and passed away.

Brian is survived by Diana, his wife of 66 years; his three children, Jeremy and his wife Mirjana, Sarah and her husband Alex, and Charles and his wife Lorna; four grandchildren, Izzy, Abby, Vanessa, and Galen; and 13 nephews and nieces. Brian was predeceased by his brothers Rex and Richard.