+ Andrew Owen Earle Raven, OBE (1959-2005)
Michael Rhodes
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was descended from the BLG family of Smith of
Midhurst, and was thus a kinsman of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
He was born 22 January, 1959, eldest son of John Earle Raven, by his
wife the former Constance Faith Alethea Hugh Smith, and was educated at
Marlborough, Bristol University (BA); Aberdeen University.
Raven's maternal grandgfather, Owen Hugh Smith, JP (1869-1958), a
younger brother of the 1st Baron Bicester, married Emmeline, daughter
of another kinsman, Eustace Abel Smith (of the BLG family Smith of
Longhills). Owen Smith had, in 1930, bought the 35,000-acre Ardtornish
estate on the Morvern peninsula in western Lochaber.
Career:->with Smith Gore land agency in Edinburgh from 1985, seconded
to the Nature Conservancy Council; managed a variety of rural estates;
Trustee of the John Muir Trust, 1989; Member of the Council of the
Rural Forum, 1992; Scottish Consumer Council, 1995; Director of Land
Management for the John Muir Trust, 1995; Chairman of the Deer
Commission for Scotland, 1998; he was a Trustee of the £30 million
project for a Millennium Forest for Scotland, and in 2000 he was
appointed a Commissioner of the Forestry Commission, becoming the
chairman of its National Committee for Scotland in 2003. Amidst all
this activity, he was also able to chair, since 2001, the Macaulay Land
Use Research Institute, the government-funded research institution in
Aberdeen whose purpose is to provide a long-term, strategic view of the
physical, environmental, and social consequences of land use.
He was appointed OBE in 2005.
He married in 1987, Amanda Game. No children.
Source: Daily Telegraph 7 Oct, 2005
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