Colonel Greville Wyndham Tufnell CVO, DL

15 July 2023

I regret to inform you of the death, after a long illness, of Colonel Greville Wyndham Tufnell CVO, DL, on Monday 10 July in a nursing home in Cirencester, aged 91. Greville was Regimental Lieutenant Colonel for two years from 1976-78, at a time when it was a full-time appointment for a serving officer.

Born in April 1932 and the son of an Army officer, after Eton College he followed his uncle into the Regiment (Capt Neville Tufnell, in his youth a first class cricketer, later a Gentleman Usher to HM King George VI), joining the 3rd Battalion on the Canal Zone in August 1952, based at Deversoir on the Great Bitter Lake for two years. This was a different age; the effective strength of the Regiment (as at 31 March 1952) was 134 officers and 3197 Other Ranks, including 614 National Servicemen and his early career was a busy and challenging one.

After instructing at the Guards Depot and then two years as ADC to Maj Gen Geordie Gordon Lennox in the 3rd Division, he became Adjutant of the 2nd Battalion in 1959, based in Hubbelrath. Following attendance at the Staff College in Camberley, he returned to the 2nd Battalion in London; in 1965 he was one of four Grenadier officers to stand vigil during the Lying-in-State of Sir Winston Churchill in Westminster Hall. By the late 1960’s he was The Captain and this included a memorable nine-month unaccompanied tour to Sharjah. He went on to command the 1st Battalion from 1971-73, initially employed on Public Duties in Chelsea Barracks, later in Munster as a Mechanized Battalion. During his command there were two lively emergency tours to Northern Ireland, the first starting in August 1971, when the battalion moved at a week’s notice to Belfast. While there, it took part in some of the most bitter fighting ever seen in the City and the first live round was fired in action by a Grenadier since 1961.

Greville retired from the Army after completing his tour as Regimental Lieutenant Colonel, but he remained active in Gloucestershire and he served as President of the Cheltenham and District Branch of the Association for many years . He became Lieutenant of the Queen’s Bodyguard of the Yeoman of the Guard and was appointed CVO in 2001. He was married twice; first to Anne Gosselin (nee Trench) who already had a daughter from a previous marriage, Nicola; and they had three more children, Caroline (died June 2018), Belinda and Georgina. Together there are ten grandchildren. Anne died in 1992. In 1994 he married Susan Burrows (nee Heath), who predeceased him.

I will circulate details of the funeral when it has been arranged and there may be a memorial service at a later date. If you would like to write to the family, please do so to all the children (Nicola, Belinda and Georgina) c/o Beechwood, Lydsee Gate, Wantage, Oxfordshire OX12 9XY.

Greville was one of his generation’s greatest, most popular characters and he served the Regiment with distinction through a period of great change. If you would like to contribute to his obituary, please send all notes, stories and recollections to me and I will pass them on.

Yours Ever

James

Major (Ret'd) J P W Gatehouse

Regimental Adjutant Grenadier Guards

Regimental Headquarters Grenadier Guards, Wellington Barracks, Birdcage Walk, London SW1E 6HQ