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Paul Cantlie
Late Scots Guards
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 Paul was born in 1934, the middle son of Kenneth and Phyllis Cantlie. He was sent to Selwyn House at the age of seven to keep his elder brother Hugh company at school and then on to Marlborough. Finally into the Regiment for his National Service where he served in 2nd Battalion in Germany.
After this his father encouraged him to take up the offer of a scholarship from Yale, but he chose instead an apprenticeship at de Havillands, following his interest in aviation and design. In May 1961, he and Paget Bellin flew a Tiger Moth in record breaking time from Biggin Hill to Cape Town; though at one stage they became lost over forest in Mozambique with night falling and the fuel indicator registering ‘empty’. As they faced impending disaster, a small landing strip miraculously appeared below them in the dense canopy of trees where they managed to put down just as the engine died, to the great surprise of the construction crew who had finished clearing the strip less than an hour before.
Back in England, Paul married Carol Gill in 1964; Carol’s father George had designed yachts for Laurent Giles in Lymington and in due course Paul too became a naval architect, joining Peter Thorneycroft. He and Carol moved to East Meon in Hampshire in 1968, where they happily raised their three children and where they lived until Carol’s death in 1999. In his later years Paul gave a good deal of his time as a governor at Southampton General Hospital, where he made many good new friends. His last two years were clouded by his youngest child John Henry’s captivity by ISIS and his efforts to try and free him, which resulted in his final appearance on TV just before his death in October 2014.
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