Tony Rudd

However, when meeting the tall, slim and suave Rudd, many could not help falling for the charm of this unapologetic iconoclast. Always ready with a witty remark, he never wore a double-breasted suit, although he did leave the family home in Kensington wearing a bowler hat and carrying an furled umbrella. The wine cellar at his firm Rowe Rudd was also a match for any of the more established players.

Rudd was equally innovative in his taste for stocks. He was one of the first to see the enormous potential in the telecoms sector. It made him rich and the firm might have been bought for a huge sum, like so many others, by banks positioning themselves to benefit from the “Big Bang” deregulation of trading in the City that Rudd’s innovations had done so much to herald. However, the onset of blindness forced him to cease trading in 1981. He then opened a venture-capitalist firm that specialised in tech start-ups, but was increasingly dogged by allegations of impropriety in his dealings that culminated in a damning DTI investigation in 1988.

His rise had seemed inexorable after Rowe Rudd became the first company to see the potential in Racal Electronics (which set up Vodafone), urging investors to buy its shares. Alan Clark, who would later became a Conservative MP, introduced Rudd to Rotork, the electronics manufacturer, which Rowe Rudd helped to take public in July 1968. One of its engineers at the time was a young James Dyson, who would go on to set up his eponymous company.

The listing of shares in Plessey, the electronics, defence and telecommunications company, cemented Rudd’s reputation as the go-to man in the technology sector. Rudd could spot losers too, and much to the consternation of the City establishment he predicted that Rolls-Royce would go bust, which it duly did the next year.

Among Rudd’s protégés were Michael Spencer, who went on to found Icap, Brian Griffiths, who later became Margaret Thatcher’s head of policy at 10 Downing Street, and Tony Parnes, known as “the animal”, who was later caught up in the Guinness scandal.

Jeffrey Archer became a client, and memorably captured the world that Rudd inhabited in his first book, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.

By the late Eighties misdemeanours were starting to catch up with Rudd. A DTI investigation found misconduct in Rowe Rudd’s takeover of the small investment vehicle the Greenbank Trust. On another occasion Rowe Rudd reported that it had carried out trades for a Swiss company called Glenlyon, but the DTI could find no trace of the company. Lawnstone’s role in the setting up of the company Norton- Villiers was also investigated. Rudd later admitted making many mistakes, but also claimed that his blindness caused him to lose control of much of what was happening.

The DTI’s report declared Rudd unfit to be a company director. He was later censured for continuing to have a close involvement in the running of Lawnstone after it had been taken over by his daughter Amber in 1988. Her involvement in Lawnstone was dredged up when she became a cabinet minister in the Conservative government.

Her father was “relentlessly pursued” by Private Eye, but bore the scrutiny stoically, unlike some, and did not lose his sense of humour even when he was the subject of ridicule.

Riley Anthony Winton Rudd, always known as Tony, was born in 1924 to Frederick, a businessman, and Grace Rudd. He was educated at Blundell’s School and won a place to read PPE at University College, Oxford, where he studied under Sir William Beveridge, the architect of the National Health Service. After two terms, he joined the RAF as a navigator in a Mosquito with a Polish squadron. He was shot down by a US aircraft while on a reconnaissance flight over Germany towards the end of the war. Rudd and his pilot only just managed to bale out before their plane, which was made mostly of wood, exploded. He returned to Oxford in 1947 and wrote a book about his war experiences titled One Boy’s War.

He joined the Bank of England in 1949, delighted with his £8-a-week salary (£267 today). Three years later the bank named him as its representative in Washington. The position always went to the most able bachelor, but Rudd had just become engaged and had forgotten to tell the bank. Cameron Cobbold, the irritated governor, was planning to cancel the appointment, but agreed to break with protocol because he was so charmed by Rudd’s fiancée, Ethne FitzGerald, who had just finished a history degree at Oxford.

He spent three years in Washington and then changed career, joining the Manchester Guardian in 1955, because he enjoyed writing. A year later he was dismayed at being asked to cover what he thought was a boring government maritime event. It turned out to be Britain’s attempt to recapture the Suez Canal. He found a tin hat and filed front-page stories for a week. He then joined the paper’s City desk, which proved to be a springboard into broking.

Rudd enjoyed the fruits of his labour. Along with the family townhouse in Kensington, he and his wife owned a mansion in Wiltshire, and Chalcot House, a stately home near Bath. Here they hosted lavish weekend parties attended by the great and the good. Rudd would lead fierce debates into the night about politics and philosophy. He was never politically aligned himself, supporting Labour in the Sixties, but switching his allegiance to Edward Heath. As a lifelong Europhile, he was delighted when Heath took Britain into the Common Market. He admired James Callaghan, but never supported Margaret Thatcher. He was deeply bewildered at the vote to leave the EU.

His dinner parties would match his politician friends, such as Peter Walker and Alan Clark, with captains of industry, such as Arnold Weinstock and Ian King. Rudd was particularly close to the mercurial Clark. He once told Clark how much he admired his capacity for reading, as his book Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45 had so many footnotes. “Don’t be ridiculous,” replied Clark. “I just made them up.”

Indeed, the family was so well connected that Amber Rudd was employed as “aristocracy co-ordinator” for Four Weddings and a Funeral, because, as the film’s director, Richard Curtis, put it, she knows “a lot of dukes and earls”. Among the “aristocrats” whom Rudd hired were her parents, paying them £100 a day. Tony Rudd was an exuberant extra in the film’s wedding scenes. The only requirement was to bring his morning suit, because there was not enough money to hire them.

Ethne was a magistrate and the secretary of the Kensington Society. She was instrumental in blocking the initial scheme for a Diana Memorial Garden near Kensington Palace because of its size. Gordon Brown sent a Treasury official to Rudd’s house to hammer out the final deal for the more modest memorial fountain.

His wife predeceased him in 2008. He found comfort in reading, opera and his collection of modern art. Above all he took solace in his family, ensuring that they all got together in France in the summer. He took great delight in helping his son, Roland, set up the communications group Finsbury. Amanda works for the cosmetics company Aveda and Melissa is a teacher. Roland, who was the treasurer of the Remain campaign last year, fondly recalled a skiing holiday in the French Alps. The children kept falling off a ski lift that was meant to take them to lunch. Rudd ordered them to keep trying until they had a firm grasp of the lift. One hour later, very bruised, they arrived at the meal having been taught a lesson about perseverance.

Rudd was close to his daughter Amber, who inherited his height and with whom he loved to debate. He staunchly supported her view about the importance of more women getting on in business and public life. He was immensely proud when she became the home secretary, and was looking forward to watching her in the televised debate this week.

Amber drew plaudits for her toughness in going ahead and standing in for the prime minister two days after her father’s death. Roland Rudd explained: “My parents had a strong view about carrying on. He would have wanted her to do the debate.”

Tony Rudd, stockbroker and venture capitalist, was born on April 24, 1924. He died of heart failure on May 29, 2017, aged 93