RANDOLL COATE wore his talents lightly. He was fluent in several languages and he had an exceptional knowledge of art, design and European history. His courtesy and curiosity were undiminished during a fulfilled life which ranged from military service in the war through work as a diplomat at the Foreign Office to his career as a leading maze designer.
Born in Lausanne and educated there, he won a scholarship to read French and German at Oriel College, Oxford, before joining the secret military establishment known as “The London Cage”, which organised raids on the French coast to take Axis prisoners for interrogation.
In December 1941 he participated in Operation Archery, a commando raid on the island of Vaagsö, off Norway. This raid wiped out the garrison, destroyed port facilities, fish oil and canning factories, and sank 15,000 tons of shipping. It also fed Hitler’s conviction that Britain intended to invade Norway, and led to his diverting about 30,000 troops there which might have been more effectively deployed elsewhere.
In the spring of 1942 Coate and a friend were given the choice of going on two raids into enemy territory. They tossed a coin and his friend got St Nazaire and was made a prisoner of war for the duration. Coate went on a diversionary raid to Bordeaux. In 1944 he was landed on the Riviera to help organise the local maquis before the landings in southern France.
Later in 1944, dropped on a mission into Greece to make contact with the resistance, he was captured by partisans who intended to execute him as a German spy, until he showed them a small Greek medallion which he always carried and which had the Lord’s Prayer engraved on it in the language. This turned out to be enough to save his life, and it effected an introduction to the partisan group he had originally been assigned to contact. He stayed with them, joining their struggle to liberate Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese. He was mentioned in dispatches for this expedition.
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After the war he joined the Foreign Office, serving in Thessalonika, Oslo, Léopoldville, Rome, The Hague, Buenos Aires, Stockholm and Brussels. He was appointed MVO and was a Chevalier de l’Ordre de Léopold.
In retirement in the 1970s he devoted himself to his true vocation, designing symbolic mazes. His first commission was the design of a 57 x 29 metre, 3,000-bush, yew hedge in a private garden in Gloucestershire; it was laid out in the shape of a giant footprint.
Most of his maze designs were for private clients, so tended not to draw much publicity. Among his most notable works (some carried out with Adrian Fisher) are the Archbishop’s Maze at Greys Court, Henley on Thames; the Borges Maze in Buenos Aires; the Marlborough Maze at Blenheim Palace; the Pyramid Maze at the Chateau de Beloeil in Belgium; the Roxburgh Maze at Floors Castle; the Lunar Labyrinth at Longleat and the Ziggurat Maze in a garden in Scotland.
Coate was the author of a book on Mount Athos, which he wrote in French, Mont Athos, la Sainte Montagne. It was subsequently translated into English. He also co-authored A Celebration of Mazes (1984) with Adrian Fisher and Graham Burgess.
He married in 1955 Pamela Dugdale Moore, a painter. He is survived by her and by two daughters.
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Randoll Coate, MVO, diplomat and maze designer, was born on October 8, 1909. He died on December 2, 2005, aged 96.