Jamie Rentoul obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/06/jamie-rentoul-obituary

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My brother Jamie Rentoul, who has died of cancer aged 50, was a distinguished civil servant, but he was modest about his brilliant career. It wasn’t until he died that I realised just how important he had been in so many of the important changes in the NHS over the past 30 years, including the campaign to change Britain from a country where lots of people smoked, everywhere, to one where far fewer do. His family and friends mainly knew him as a wonderful companion, generous, witty and laid back.

He was born in Bangalore, where our father, Robert, was a minister in the Church of South India and our mother, Mary, was a teacher. The family returned to Britain permanently in 1969, first in Bristol and then Wolverhampton, where Jamie attended the grammar school. He was six years younger than me, with our sisters Sue and Brigid in between, but he was more than my equal at absolutely everything. He could beat me at football, one against one in our garden, and went on to be a star of the football team at school and at university. He was academically brilliant, too. He went to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1983, where he got the top first in psychology.

He started work at the Department of Health, then known as the DHSS, in 1986. Soon he was speechwriter for Kenneth Clarke, who was secretary of state for health until 1990, when two things happened. The first was that Jamie met Rowena, his future wife, at a ceramic class at Morley College in Lambeth. The other was that the Conservatives deposed Margaret Thatcher, which meant Jamie was working for a new health secretary, William Waldegrave.

In 1995 he went to California – with Rowena – where he studied for an MBA at Stanford University. On his return he was deputy director and acting head of the Prime Minister’s Performance and Innovation Unit under Tony Blair. He was head of strategy at the Healthcare Commission, which became the Care Quality Commission, before returning to the Department of Health, latterly as director of Health and Wellbeing – the sad irony being that he was working on improving early detection of cancer when he was diagnosed himself.

Jamie and Rowena were married on a beach on Iona, Scotland, where we had stayed as children and where they and their son, Billy, and various relations usually spent part of their summers.

Jamie’s vast and intricate mazes have at one time covered every large stretch of sand in Iona, for the children to navigate, and for the tide to wash away. He is much missed by all his friends and family.

Jamie is survived by Rowena and Billy, our parents, and Sue, Brigid and me.