As I am the only one of the family left who remembers Eric as a very young man, so just a few early memories:

One Easter when I was about five, he came with Ivy to stay with us in Woodford; they would then both have been around fifteen.  I remember we went for a walk (with butterfly net at the ready) and I have a vivid recollection of being dragged straight through the garden of a complete stranger in hot pursuit of a Red Admiral butterfly  Later that week he painted our back fence with rum and treacle to attract moths, but our dog licked most of it off and my mother was confronted that evening by a very inebriated animal in the throes of throwing up all over her treasured chinese rug.

During the war I spent one idyllic summer holiday with Eric and Ivy at Ash Vale when he was with the Army.  Once a week he gave ballroom dancing classes in the village hall and this gawky thirteen year old would line up with a roomfull of soldiers and learn how to dance to Victor Sylvester and his Ballroom Orchestra.

Eric gave me a lifelong interest in all aspects of natural history and some of my happiest memories are of working with him at Watkins and Doncaster in the late forties/early fifties and being subjected daily to an inexhaustible fund of jokes, which continued via letter, telephone and email, right up until the end.

I miss him.