My mother's obituary of my grandfather appeared in The Guardian's Other Lives today.
It was not the most significant occasion on which Svend had offered vital assistance. He had begun working with Danish Airlines, in Copenhagen, in the late 1930s and, following the Nazi invasion of Denmark in 1940, he had joined the resistance - where his knowledge of aircraft movements proved useful. And with Mary, his Welsh wife, Svend was in the network smuggling Danish Jews to Sweden. Some of those fugitives became lifelong friends.
Born in Copenhagen, Svend was the youngest of six children of an exuberantly talented Danish writer and humorist, and a beautiful mother whose accidental death when he was six shattered his family. Svend, who was clever and adept at languages, was to end his education early, and then joined Scandinavia's biggest duvet and pillow manufacturer.
That job took him, in his mid-20s, to work in London where, at the English-Speaking Union he met Mary Davies playing ping pong. They married in 1938, honeymooned in Berlin, and went on to Copenhagen - soon followed by the Wehrmacht.
In 1946 Svend arrived in Warsaw to set up a Poland-Scandinavia air route. He never forgot that devastated city, where his hotel was one of the few buildings left standing, and where he pulled his bed into the middle of his room to avoid the bedbugs swarming the walls. The iron curtain was descending, that venture was aborted and by the late 1940s Svend was with SAS in Prestwick, Scotland, which, in that pre-jet era was a transatlantic air hub.
Those were his happiest times, his young family was settled in the tranquil seaside town, and at the airport the likes of Nobel prizewinner William Faulkner, Swedish opera singer Jussi Björling and Elizabeth Taylor passed through. Many shared Svend's fondness for whisky, and his job also entailed getting the celebrities back in the air in reasonably sober states. Nobel committees and European opera houses had much to thank him for.
In 1953 came Cairo. We all loved the life: bazaars, desert picnics, excursions to the pyramids and embassy parties. Then came 1956. Two years later we moved to Milan where, I think, his interests in opera and art rekindled - this led in retirement to his graduation with an Open University arts degree.
Later, leaving SAS, he settled in London and finally in Richmond, Surrey. We three daughters had scattered to three continents, and our parents' flat became a Heathrow annexe. "Make yourself at home," one of Svend's favourite phrases, was still repeated when we spent last Christmas with him.
Caring for our mother in her long illness, he discovered other talents. After her death Svend continued to visit St John's Hospital, in Twickenham, working with those suffering from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, making tea, relieving their carers. At one point he was chauffeuring and tea-partying at least half-a-dozen elderly ladies.
It was, as Cyril Marshall, a friend of his ever since Egyptian days remarked, a privilege to have known a man who was a natural gentleman. And laughter was in Svend's lifeblood.
He is survived by we three daughters, Clair, Nina and Joanna, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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