A bugler played the Last Post as Oxfordshire county councillors, past and present, gathered to salute a former chairman, Colonel Richard Norman, at a memorial service in the village church of St Mary the Virgin, at Buckland, near Faringdon.

Col Norman, formerly of Milton Mill, near Abingdon, who was county council chairman between 1979 and 1981, died last month, aged 89. He joined the Durham Light Infantry in 1934 after leaving Cambridge University, and saw service in the UK, and later abroad, in India, Sudan, China, Egypt, and North Africa. After serving on the Joint Planning Staff in London, he went on to become Chief of Military Intelligence in Palestine, second-in-command of the 1st Durham Light Infantry, then Officer Commanding the 6th DLI.

Leaving the Army, he moved to Milton in 1964, and was elected to the Drayton division of Berkshire County Council. After local government reorganisation of county boundaries 10 years later, he became Drayton's representative for Oxfordshire, and was chairman of the county's environmental committee, before becoming chairman.