My brother Jamie Rentoul, who has died of cancer aged 50, was a distinguished civil servant, but he was modest about his brilliant career. It wasn’t until he died that I realised just how important he had been in so many of the important changes in the NHS over the past 30 years, including the campaign to change Britain from a country where lots of people smoked, everywhere, to one where far fewer do. His family and friends mainly knew him as a wonderful companion, generous, witty and laid back.
He was born in Bangalore, where our father, Robert, was a minister in the Church of South India and our mother, Mary, was a teacher. The family returned to Britain permanently in 1969, first in Bristol and then Wolverhampton, where Jamie attended the grammar school. He was six years younger than me, with our sisters Sue and Brigid in between, but he was more than my equal at absolutely everything. He could beat me at football, one against one in our garden, and went on to be a star of the football team at school and at university. He was academically brilliant, too. He went to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1983, where he got the top first in psychology.
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