Appropriately for a composer who lived near Stroud, Burgon also wrote the music for Cider with Rosie (1998). Indeed, he was a distinctive figure in Gloucestershire: tall, silver-haired and driving one of his collection of fast cars – at various times he kept Bristols, a Chrysler V8 and a Ferrari Dino. “I had a Porsche 911 that did everything perfectly, but I just sort of got bored,” he observed. He was also an enthusiastic cricketer, turning out regularly for his local club, and in his spare time wrote detective novels – featuring a musician who drives a fast car.
In a career of many musical high points, Burgon identified one in particular: “I was standing at the checkout in Tesco and a little girl about 10 years old started singing the theme from [the television version of] Narnia and I thought, ‘Wow, that is really nice’.”
Geoffrey Burgon, who died on September 21, married first, in 1963, Janice Garwood. He is survived by his second wife, the Canadian pianist and singer Jacqueline Kroft, whom he married in 1992, by their son, and by a son and a daughter of his first marriage.