Robert Hutchison obituary

My friend Robert Hutchison, who has died aged 76, was a promoter of culture and the arts with exceptional versatility and range. The Winchester poetry festival, Wilfred Owen Association and Winchester Action on Climate Change are three of the recent successful ventures he led.

The youngest of three children of Terence Hutchison, and his German-born wife, Loretta (nee Hack), Robert was born in Baghdad, where his father, later an eminent economic historian, was teaching English. The family fled to India when he was two weeks old, to escape the approaching German army.