Robin Neville Farrington

Robin Farrington was the son-in-law of actress Vivien Leigh and her first husband Leigh Holman. Farrington was awarded an immediate MC in 1948 while serving as a platoon commander with the King's Royal Rifle Corps in Palestine.

Towards the end of 1947, after the rejection of the UN plan for the partition of Palestine, heavy fighting broke out between Jews and Arabs. In February 1948, the 2nd Battalion KRRC (60th Rifles), forming part of Southforce, was given the task of keeping open road and rail communications and helping to keep law and order until the expiry of the British mandate in May.

A motor battalion was ideally suited to south Palestine, with its open, sandy country. The area was mainly Arab with scattered Jewish settlements, and one of the major problems was to separate the relatively well-armed Israeli patrols from the numerically superior Arab irregulars who defended the villages.

The Jewish convoys supplying the settlements also had to be protected. To remain impartial, the British did not provide escorts but deployed standing patrols in vulnerable areas. Occasionally these were forced to open fire to break up Arab attempts to destroy a convoy, but persuasion was used wherever possible. Besides interposing themselves between the combatants, they also recovered the wounded.

On one occasion, Farrington's platoon was escorting a troop of artillery when it was ambushed by armed Arabs intent on capturing the 5.5 inch guns. His platoon quickly dismounted from their half-tracks and beat off the attack. On another, when caught in a cross-fire between Jews and Arabs, Farrington deployed his riflemen to protect an Arab village and with an adroit mixture of bluff, diplomacy and force of character he persuaded the Jewish commander to withdraw his armoured cars. It was for this action that he was awarded his MC.

Robin Neville Farrington was the son of a group captain, and educated at Rugby and Magdalene, Cambridge, where he read French and German.

In 1946, he attended OCTU at Eaton Hall, Cheshire, where he was awarded the Belt of Honour. After being commissioned into the Rifle Brigade, then transferring to the 2nd Battalion KRRC, he was posted to Palestine. Farrington came down from Cambridge in 1952 and joined Matthews Wrightson, the Lloyd's insurance brokers, before moving to Whitbread's in 1958.

In 1957 he married Suzanne Holman, the only daughter of the actress Vivien Leigh by her first marriage. He later recalled his first meeting with the actress, soon after the couple had become secretly engaged: "I was very nervous, and as she came into the drawing room I walked forward to shake her hand. Unfortunately, the cat inserted itself on to my toe and I have never done such a good rugger conversion. The cat flew across the room. It was a very bad beginning."

After two years' training at Whitbread's, Farrington became personal assistant to the deputy chairman and was closely involved in the group's investment and merger activity in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1972, he became chairman of the company's south-east region before becoming managing director of Whitbread International in 1976. He was appointed an executive director of the main board in 1970 and vice-chairman in 1983. He retired in 1993 and lived for many years in a Wiltshire village, from where he fished on the river Wylie. He also enjoyed skiing, sailing, and gastronomic trips to France.