15 MARCH 1930, Page 12

Ewan Agnew

IT is with deep regret that we learn of the death of Mr. Ewan Agnew, for five years a director of the Spectator and a frequent contributor. We desire to express our deep but unavailing sympathy with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Agnew and his young wife. The ways of Providence are never more inscrutable than when a young life is stricken down, they are doubly so in the case of one so full of promise as Ewan Agnew, who, had it not been for his protracted ill-health would have one day succeeded his father as managing director of Punch.

Ewan Agnew was the only surviving child of his parents, his sister Joy having died at the age of twenty-two. The present writer saw Ewan Agnew on many occasions, while at Eton, New College, or home on leave from Lord Allenby's Force in the Near East, and in the Spectator office.. His contributions to the Spectator were mainly dramatic and musical criticisms..

Ewan Agnew was one of those rare spirits whose presence made, you feel better and with whom you could not associate the thought of evil. His interests were wide and covered besides the theatre and music, politics, travel and hunting. And then came the tragedy of an illness which' left him more or less of an invalid, and the heroic cheerfulness with which he bore his physical disabilities. On the last occasion on which the present writer saw him he seemed stronger in health and spoke quite hopefully of the future. The fmal chapter was a sudden attack on Saturday last and a sleep from which he did not awake—a peaceful and painless end.

E. W.