My friend Kingsley Williams, who has died aged 94, was a solicitor who served on a number of public bodies in the Hampshire area from 1960 onwards.
He was chair and pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Southampton’s board of governors (which he chaired from 1987 to 1999), chair of governors of the Winchester School of Art (being something of a scholar in renaissance art himself), chair of the Labour party’s regional council for the south east, and – in what was perhaps the position that mattered most to his loyal political heart – chair of the Wessex health authority for many years.
Kingsley was born in Accra in Ghana, where his British parents, Reverend
Charles Kingsley Williams and Margaret (nee Bucknall), were teaching at the time; his father was assistant vice-principal at Achimota College and school. After attending Kingswood school in Bath he read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and, following articles in St Austell, went to Guildford Law School before going on to become a solicitor at the firm of what became Dutton, Gregory and Williams in Winchester, specialising in company law and working with them for the rest of his professional life.
Outside of his legal work, Kingsley stoically accepted the hard labour, ceaseless demands and interminable agendas that came with his various voluntary posts. He was an efficient, well-informed and principled chair of all the entities that he served, comporting himself with unfailing poise, direct good manners and friendliness. He was accessible to all supplicants, and treated all around him with equal candour and generosity.
He is survived by his second wife, Eleanor (nee Jones), whom he married in 2001, and by two sons, Michael and Nicolas, from his first marriage to Brenda Baldwin, which ended in divorce.
