OBITUARY: Sir Trenchard Cox

Trenchard Cox was the best-liked director of the Victoria and Albert Museum of the last half-century; a man whose wisdom, kindness and classless outlook inspired the widespread loyalty and support of the museum's staff. He was regarded with a respect bordering on devotion by all but the most truculent of his colleagues, and grew to occupy a place in their affections more usually reserved for a much-loved parent.

Cox was offered the job at the V & A in 1955 by David (later Viscount) Eccies, the then Minister of Education responsible for the appointment. At that time Director of the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, Cox was summoned to London for an interview, at which Eccles informed him he had been selected to keep the seat warm for John Pope- Hennessy. "I thought he might have put it a little more delicately," Cox later recalled, "and I decided to stay for 11 years."

Openly opposed only by Arthur Lane, the brilliant, but depressive, Keeper of Ceramics who was later to take his own life, Cox's appointment to succeed Sir Leigh Ashton was greeted with general relief at the museum. Ashton's increasing unfitness to carry out his duties had given serious cause for concern, and morale at the V & A was low. Cox, who had engineered a remarkable post-war renaissance at Birmingham, possessed precisely the right qualities to restore confidence.

He was the least self- regarding of men (Pope- Hennessy described him in his memoirs as "almost neurotically modest") and a stranger to hauteur. Entering the V & A one day shortly before taking up his post with an armful of books for his new office, Cox found his way barred by a burly museum attendant. "You can't bring those books in here, sir," the man was overheard to say. "It's quite all right, it's quite all right," Cox replied. "I shall be working here myself in two weeks' time."

His first objective on arriving at the V & A set the tone of his directorship. With the help of his assistant Terence Hodgkinson, Cox resolved to learn the names of all his several hundred staff within three weeks. He did so successfully, and thereafter would greet everyone at the museum, whatever their position, warmly and by name. He slipped up only once, when accidentally confusing the identities of two typists who had temporarily exchanged places.

Charlotte Bonham Carter once remarked that "Trenchard would never miss a charwoman's funeral", and he was famous for the concern he showed for his staff and their families. Former colleagues recall Cox arriving with hampers to cheer them up when overworked, arranging promotions they had not dared apply for, and always his kind words of encouragement. During his directorship he never once failed to send a note complimenting a curator on the opening of a new exhibition.

Free of the prejudices that were commonplace among his generation, Cox was consistently even-handed with appointments. In the early 1960s, for the first time in the V & A's history, he saw to it that a female research assistant was promoted Assistant Keeper, and, again for the first time, that a black warder was promoted Supervisor. Confirming his judgement, the same Supervisor subsequently went on to be appointed the museum's Chief Warder after Cox had retired.

An Old Etonian with a tentative, fastidious manner, a short step and extremely poor eyesight (he was a notoriously frightening motorist), Cox was not a difficult man to poke fun at. When talking animatedly in his squeaky, old-fashioned voice, he would wave his hands about and sway in a way reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's Dormouse, to whom he bore more than a passing resemblance. Such factors, together with his reluctance to reprove or discourage, also led some to consider Cox weak.

But perceptive contemporaries, including the unsparing Ellis Waterhouse, recognised Cox's determination and flair. At Birmingham, working with Dr Mary Woodall, Keeper of the Department of Art, Cox established the war-damaged Museum and Art Gallery as a leading national institution along fully metropolitan lines. He enjoyed excellent relations with the Birmingham City Corporation, and founded one of the most successful museum Friends organisations of the period.

Cox was also a connoisseur who had a good eye both for objects and their display. Acquisitions he made for the V & A included the superb jade wine- cup of Shah Jehan, generally considered to be the museum's most distinguished post-war Indian acquisition. And during Cox's directorship the museum's appearance and the various exhibitions staged there, notably the exhibition of Opus Anglicanum in the early 1960s, were of a consistently high standard.

Scrupulous in spending public money, Cox was nevertheless fortunate that the funding of museum purchases was less problematical in his day than today. For Birmingham he acquired five fine portraits by Arthur Devis, offered to the museum by an elderly local resident who had been left them by her father as an insurance against hard times. Of several independent valuations of the pictures Cox obtained, he offered their owner the highest figure in view of her straitened circumstances.

An able linguist and scholar, Cox graduated from Cambridge with a First Class degree in Modern Languages and went on to study art history at Berlin University under Adolf Goldschmidt. He always felt at home on the Continent, above all in France (of whose culinary traditions he was a keen student) and forged firm friendships with many of his museum colleagues overseas. His publications included well-regarded books on Jehan Foucquet, Native of Tours (1931) and David Cox (1947).

Trenchard Cox's greatest strength was without question his facility with people, and his greatest quality his moral weight. He was also a shrewd judge of character and ability, quick to recognise potential in others and to promote their achievements. Surviving members of his staff, many of whom went on to occupy important posts in the museum and academic world, recall him as a great enabler, and as the single most formative influence in their professional lives.

In retirement Cox devoted much time and energy to the activities of St Martin-in-the-Fields. He served the parish as People's Warden from 1968 to 1979, and was staunch in his support of the social welfare work for which St Martin's is well known. Cox was devoted to his wife, Maisie, and greatly affected by her death in 1973.

George Ireland

George Trenchard Cox, museum director: born 31 July 1905; Assistant to the Keeper, the Wallace Collection 1932-39; seconded to Home Office 1940- 44; Director, Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery 1944-55; CBE 1954; Director and Secretary, Victoria and Albert Museum 1956-66; Kt 1961; member, Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries 1967-77; Honorary Fellow, Royal Academy 1981; married 1935 Maisie Anderson (died 1973); died 21 December 1995.