GILES AUTY 1934 – 24th. September 2020
Great Stage player of the 80’s Giles Auty passed away a month short of his 86th Birthday. He was a minor counties player and a well renowned Artist. I am sure that many of the long standing members of the club will remember Giles with much fondness.
Memories of Giles from Ed Pegge
He was indeed a fine cricketer and I played under his skippership for many years particularly during Phil Dunbar’s period.
Unlike you I have no chapter and verse of particular incidents and I was delighted to hear that he had a fine batting innings under your captaincy, Brian. His metronomic bowling action always meant long spells and, according to unwritten rules down the batting order.
I caught up with Giles in Sydney in the late 1990’s when he arrived to be Rupert Murdoch’s art critic in The Australian.
You may not know, but not be surprised to hear, that he was also a fine tennis player. As in a cricket game he was instinctively competitive but at least I managed to give him a game which, of course he always won. I was around at tthe time he first met Anoushka who he married and had children with.
Giles high profile in the art world here brought him to Adelaide where my family came and remain. He gave a brilliant lecture I attended and I was able to entertain him through a high profile art collector friend.
I was also able to introduce him to a prominent OZ artist who, back in the UK, painted Giles’ portrait of which I witnessed a short session somewhere in an Earl’s Court flat. In other words I got to know the other Giles.
After being sacked from The Australian he escaped the post modern world crap and fled to the Blue Mountains living in Bowral. Sadly I lost touch with him and only caught up with his continued presence here through reading The Spectator.