Lord Rowe-Beddoe, international businessman who became a leading public figure in Wales – obituary

Lord Rowe-Beddoe, who has died aged 85, became a ubiquitous figure in the public and cultural life of his native Wales after an international business career with De La Rue and Revlon.

David Rowe-Beddoe’s portfolio of appointments ranged from the chairmanship of Cardiff International Airport to the presidencies of the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, the Cardiff Business Club and the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, as well as the pro-chancellorship of the University of Glamorgan. It was as though no committee for economic or cultural advance in Wales was quorate without him.

Several of his most significant contributions reflected a passion for the performing arts. As chairman of the Wales Millennium Centre from 2001 to 2010 he was a driving force in its establishment as a prestigious national arts venue.

At the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where he was successively chairman, president and “chairman laureate”, he played a key role in fundraising for improved facilities and prevailed on the family of his close friend Richard Burton to allow the college’s new theatre to be named after the great Welsh actor.

The college described Rowe-Beddoe as “an extraordinary champion over many decades. Very simply he loved the college and the college loved him back.”

David Rowe-Beddoe (right) and Captain Norman Lloyd Edwards, Lordf Lieutenant for South Glamorgan, greet Queen Elizabeth II on her arrival at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, for a Royal Gala performance in 2004 – Alamy

Likewise he was praised for a 10-year stint as chairman of the Representative Body of the Church in Wales, whose finances he steered to reform. He was, said the Archbishop of Wales, Andrew John, “a man of enormous talent and energy… motivated by his own deep personal faith”.

Rowe-Beddoe’s multiple contributions to Welsh life were widely admired. But when he first came to prominence in the early 1990s, having lived away from Wales for many years, he was spotlighted by Labour politicians alleging that the Major government was “stuffing” quangos with Tory supporters.

In particular it was pointed out that he was being paid £70,000 a year to chair both the Welsh Development Agency (whose previous head had departed after a row over misuse of public funds), and the Development Board of Rural Wales, while simultaneously holding “a full-time job in Monaco” and being “a former chairman of the Monte Carlo Conservatives Abroad Association”.

To which David Hunt, the former Welsh Secretary and minister responsible for open government, retorted: “There has been so much mud thrown around. Some of it is trash. Mr Rowe-Beddoe has impeccable Welsh credentials. He is undoubtedly an exceedingly successful chairman.”

Lord Rowe-Beddoe, as President of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, at a gala concert for the college at Buckingham Palace in 2016 – Getty Images

David Sydney Rowe-Beddoe was born on December 19 1937. His father Sydney, son of a carpenter and described as a “traveller” at the time of his marriage to David’s mother Gwendolan in 1933, died four months before David was born.

Gwendolan was better known as the opera singer Dolan Evans, who became the first singing teacher at Cardiff College of Music (predecessor of the Royal Welsh) when it was founded in Cardiff Castle in 1949. Having visited the college with her as a youngster, David endowed an annual singing prize in her name.

David was educated at Llandaff Cathedral School and Stowe. He did National Service as a sub-lieutenant RNVR before going on to study at St John’s College, Cambridge, and later at Harvard Business School.

At Cambridge he made his name as an accomplished musician and actor in a cohort that included Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi – though one London critic, of a play called Clair de Lune, noted only that “David Rowe-Beddoe did not manage to convince us of [his character’s] reality.”

He joined the historic banknote printer Thomas de la Rue & Co in 1961, rising to chief executive a decade later. From 1976 to 1981 he worked for the Revlon cosmetics brand in New York, first as president of its Latin American and Caribbean business and later for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

He went on to hold positions with the investment bank Morgan Stanley and as a director of numerous companies, and to chair the Office for National Statistics.

Lord Rowe-Beddoe at the ceremony honouring Richard Burton with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 2013 – Jerod Harris/WireImage

It was during his time in New York that Rowe-Beddoe made a cameo appearance in Richard Burton’s (later published) diaries.

In July 1980, after the Broadway preview of a fraught production of Camelot in which the actor was suffering “an agony of brand-new costumes”, Rowe-Beddoe, “old friend and wisest and most compassionate of men (dispassionate too)” was invited to look at the show with fresh eyes.

He and another guest, the Telegraph critic John Barber, offered a late-night scene-by-scene analysis that Burton found “invaluable”.

One of Rowe-Beddoe’s questions was why was Burton the only male member of the cast who wasn’t wearing tights. “Had my legs suddenly, in middle age, become scrimshanked?” Burton wrote. “No, said I, spluttering at the very thought. I’ll show you all, by damn. And last night I did. All costumes had to be tightened up…”

Rowe-Beddoe played the organ at Burton’s private funeral in Switzerland in 1984, and was instrumental in persuading Burton’s ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor to make a substantial donation to the Royal Welsh College.

Rowe-Beddoe was knighted in 2000 and created a life peer in 2006, sitting as a crossbencher; he was also a deputy lieutenant of Gwent.

He married first, in 1962, Malinda Collison. The marriage was dissolved in 1982 and he married secondly, in 1984, Madeleine Harrison, who survives him with three daughters from the first marriage.

Lord Rowe-Beddoe, born December 19 1937, died November 15 2023

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