The Times

Sir Charles Brett

Sir Charles Brett was the towering and tireless champion of Ulster's architectural heritage over nearly half a century. He described himself in 18th-century terms as a provincial Irish attorney, the sixth generation of his family in a line of solicitors (now continued by his son) but early in his career joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party hoping to build up a constructive non-sectarian alternative to the Unionists. When his hopes finally collapsed in 1974 he observed: "There is no future in British or Irish politics for somebody who dislikes all forms of religion, all forms of sport and all kinds of pets." Charles Edward Bainbridge Brett was born in 1928. After school at Aysgarth in Yorkshire and Rugby he won a history scholarship to Oxford, where he attended Kenneth Clarke's lectures on the Italian Renaissance, and was president of the University Poetry Society, visiting country pubs with Dylan Thomas, whom he one night wheeled home asleep in a large pram to Witney.