Colleagues and friends from across the travel industry attended the funeral of Peter Stewart on Friday.
The travel industry lawyer died unexpectedly of a heart attack on April 27, aged just 59.
Described as ‘the sharpest legal brain in the industry’, the long-standing partner at Field Fisher was laid to rest in Kent.
ABTA’s top team, a coach-full of Field Fisher team members, representatives of AITO, insurance brokers, accountants, companies for whom Peter had acted (and, inevitably, had won cases for) were there alongside Peter’s beloved wife of 30 years, Amanda – herself a lawyer – and their three sons, plus family from Northern Ireland, Switzerland and elsewhere.
The service, held in Tonbridge School’s Chapel, opened with Peter’s favourite Pink Floyd number, Wish You Were Here, and was conducted by a priest who’d been house master to one of Peter’s sons and who knew the family well.
"He urged us all to sing, to listen and to pray at what was going to be a simple but heart-felt and carefully-composed service. We duly did so," said Sue Ockwell, director of Travel PR.
"The Eulogy was given by Sir Charles Haddon-Cave, QC, a Cambridge friend of Peter’s since they’d met back in the 1970s.
"He had us laughing unexpectedly about their joint lack of success with young ladies (‘they weren’t interested in us’), Peter’s cute owlish look aged three with his NHS specs, and about having been caught out by Peter, in front of clients, in connection with a non-existent judgment, flustering him so much that he recalled it clearly some 30 years later."
After Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones played Peter out of the chapel, he was remembered through conversations about past cases, Peter’s oft-jokingly-stated ambition to run a Greek hotel and restaurant (which his Greek friends strongly advised against!) and other memories.
Sue added: "It was a sad day for the travel industry, with one attendee proclaiming that the industry was no longer safe without Peter’s presence as a guardian of good practice."
