Bryan Lord Myatt - 16/1/1938-6/10/2025

Dad’s life began in 1938 in circumstances that, for me at least only 35 years younger seem a world away; two up two down terrace in Bolton, blackened with coal smoke, an outside toilet in the yard, no running hot water or central heating and very soon German bombing.

Despite the obvious danger and the family’s modest circumstance, going to the bomb shelter was consider by his father to be “common” and so out of the question. Instead the family huddled under the stairs. One day emerging in the morning, they discovered most of the rest of the street had been flattened. I think this is where Dad’s life-long love of Guinness came from - his mother dosing him and his older brother as toddlers so they slept deeply.

Dad was a bright boy and found his way through the dreaded 11+ to Bolton grammar school. A family friend bought his uniform. What might be described as the Myatt family’s respectable working class poverty was largely caused by his father having decided to retire in his late 40s and after that keeping the family afloat with odd bookkeeping jobs and a modest portfolio of investments. To be fair he had earned that right, having started work aged 12 after his own father died falling off an industrial chimney he was working on. As for Dad, he was always careful with money and had a life-long interest in investing with some success and hopefully to the profit of some through the Brightwell Investment Club.

Having started work as a metallurgist at 18 he was lured south, aged 21, to research metal fatigue in airframes. Around 1960 he joined the Harwell site of the Atomic Energy Authority then boasting no less than 5 nuclear reactors.

The arc of Dad’s scientific career spanned the dawn of civilian nuclear age to the heady days of so-called cold fusion in 1989. Teams at Harwell worked round the clock to try to replicate the Pons and Fleishman experiment without success. In between there were a number of mysterious work trips to the US. Dad would never discuss where or for what purpose. Also, less glamorously a couple of serious doses of radiation from accidents in the lab followed by days of enemas and showers.

In the 60s Harwell had electron microscopes and computers the size of rooms. Firm friendships were made, Chris Smith and Alan Taylor in particular. Dad and Alan loved mucking about in boats, smuggling cheap French booze and cigarettes rather than people, the 60s being more innocent times. Good times at Harwell came to an end at the end of the late 80s when funding was slashed and Dad moved on to his second and third careers, Didcot second hand car salesman and Reading Crown Court Bailiff. He ran Broadway Service Station with Chris Hubbard.

 Dad was deeply involved in the civic life of Wallingford during the whole of the 1970s and 80s. He served on the council for many years and was mayor twice with dinners and parties at RAF Benson, Oxford and Henley; guests included Airey Neave, Michael Heseltine and the Duke of Edinburgh and several invitations to garden parties at Buckingham Palace, a far cry from Bolton.

He founded the old Wallingford Magazine, encouraged the Archaeological Society, helped bring the Castle grounds into public use and I think was a sometime projectionist at the Corn Exchange in the early years of Sinodun Players. After some years in Wantage Road, Wallingford and Crowmarsh, Brightwell became home. As many will know Brightwell is a special place to live.

Finally - the most important and transformative influence on Dad’s life: Kate Sue Hamilton. It is fair to say that Dad fell on his feet when after a brief unsuccessful first marriage he met a beautiful young nurse at a dance near Oxford. Neither had wanted to go, Dad dragged there by his housemates and Mum, being late back from shift at the Old Radcliffe and having fought off a would-be attacker on her way home, persuaded out by flatmates. There she met a tall dark-haired scientist with large sideburns and a sports car who gave her a lift home. The rest is history.

 In some cases a marriage simply brings love and a life partner, in others a whole new family en masse. Dad’s welcome into the warm energy of the Hamilton/Bevan-John extended family and its sheer scale was an eye opening contrast to his own family. If Dad were speaking, he would certainly credit his length of life and happiness to my Mum and her selfless love, support, excellent cooking and nursing care. We all agree he was lucky and right.

 Nick Myatt