Edward Branson

Edward James Branson was born on March 10 1918. His own father, Sir George Branson, was a High Court judge. Never an academic child, Ted's principal interest at Bootham School in York was natural history; he also broke most of the school's swimming records. When he expressed a wish to become an archaeologist, his father insisted that he prepare for a career in the Law.

Late in his life Ted Branson would recall a similar exchange between himself and his own son Richard, the future head of the Virgin empire: "There was a time when I felt [Richard] ought to get a qualification, so I walked him up and down our lawn at home and said I would like him to qualify as a barrister. Later, I felt awful because I had said to him just what my father had said to me. So, the next weekend, I walked him up and down the lawn once again and told him to forget everything I'd said."

At Trinity College, Cambridge, Ted read Law and got a swimming Blue. But two years into his degree war intervened, and he was commissioned into the Staffordshire Yeomanry, seeing action in tanks in Palestine, at El Alamein and Salerno, and in Germany.

While attached to the 2nd Armoured Division in North Africa, Branson contracted jaundice and was taken to hospital in Cairo. He was recuperating when he met the American Egyptologist George Reisner. Whenever he had leave, Branson would join Reisner in the desert as an informal assistant looking for shards of pottery.

During the Salerno landings, Branson acted as liaison officer with the 36th Texan Division. In Germany, where he was a staff major administering the dispersal of refugees and displaced persons, he sported a monocle and presided in his office from a Louis Quatorze chair.

In 1946 he returned to England and, reluctantly, to his Law studies. He met his wife Eve Huntley – a former dancer and actress – at a drinks party in 1948 when she proffered a plate of sausages. She was then a stewardess on British South America Airways; her mother, Dorothy, had at the age of 89 become the oldest person in Britain to pass the advanced Latin-American ballroom dancing examination.

Branson proposed to Eve while she was riding pillion on his motorcycle and they married in 1949, returning from the honeymoon to discover that he had failed his Bar exams, and that his father had reduced his allowance because he had married before having qualified. Their son Richard was born soon afterwards and a steady income became essential. Ted Branson acquired a sidecar for his motorcycle to accommodate the infant; while Ted drove, Eve rode pillion, reciting legal cases into his ear.

He finally qualified, but to make ends meet Eve made embroidered cushions and trinkets which she sold at Harrods. After the birth in 1953 of their second child, Lindi, she trained as a gliding instructor.

Branson was called to the Bar by Inner Temple in 1950, initially specialising in insurance cases and later moving into criminal practice in London and the south-east from chambers at 1 Crown Office Row in the Temple. From 1971 to 1987 he was a metropolitan stipendiary magistrate.

Ted Branson took great pleasure in life and in the success of his son Richard. He maintained his interest in archaeology and natural history, and delighted his many friends with his mischievous sense of humour and his charm.

He is survived by his wife and by his son and two daughters.

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