Lord Christopher Thynne, who has died aged 82, was a representative of the whirlwind era of the 1960s and comptroller of the Longleat estate for 17 years. A lean figure with blinding blue eyes, he possessed wild grace and a streak of unpredictability. His parents had been glamorous figures in the 1920s. His father was the 6th Marquess of Bath, the celebrated owner of Longleat from 1946, who joined the stately home tourist industry in the 1960s by introducing the "Lions of Longleat" as a popular lure to tourists. His mother, from whom he inherited his rebellious streak, was Daphne Vivian, who enjoyed numerous affairs before leaving her husband for Xan Fielding. His sister Caroline married David Somerset, later Duke of Beaufort, while Christopher was greatly distressed by the suicide of his younger brother, Valentine, in 1979, following a gala evening at Longleat, at which Princess Margaret had been present.
Stanley Bard, who has died aged 82, was the co-owner and manager for more than 40 years of the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street, Manhattan, a free-wheeling, dilapidated and distinctly grubby red-brick bolthole for a bohemian cast of writers, painters and musicians, drug fiends, drag queens and assorted deadbeats. Built in 1883 when, at 12 storeys, it was among the tallest buildings in New York, the Chelsea became a residential hotel in 1905. Describing the hotel under the Bard regime, Arthur Miller, who lived there for seven years, wrote that it was, "not part of America, had no vacuum cleaners, no rules, no taste, no shame ... it was a ceaseless party". In one room, Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, and in others Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can't Go Home Again, Jack Kerouac On The Road, and William Burroughs The Naked Lunch.
David Burwell, the co-founder and first president of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, a Washington-based organisation that has led nationwide efforts to convert thousands of miles of unused railroad corridors to trails and parklands, has died at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, aged 69. Inspired in part by his mother, who helped create an 11-mile bike trail on Cape Cod, Burwell was instrumental in building a national movement to preserve green space and to provide options for alternative modes of transportation. As thousands of miles of old railroad lines were abandoned each year, some communities across the country remade them as paths for bicycling and nature walks. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, which Burwell founded in 1986 with Peter Harnik, became the first group to co-ordinate national efforts to build such a network.