A FARNHAM resident for 22 years and a well-known figure in local politics through his work in the South West Surrey Conservative Association and Waverley Borough Council, Frederick Graham Ralph Lambert (mostly known as Graham), has passed away at the age of 87.

Graham’s funeral will be today (Thursday) at 2.15pm at Aldershot Crematorium, family floors only – all donations will go to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and Home-Start in Waverley.

From rural origins, through a career in the army and a tobacco industry, Graham travelled extensively before settling in the south east of England and taking up local politics.

He was born in Wiltshire in 1929, and earned scholarships to school and the army, that eventually led him abroad. He joined BAT (British American Tobacco) as an accountant in 1951, and worked in the financial division of a number of subsidiaries in Asia and Africa, before returning to England in the 1970s.

At the London headquarters of BAT, he reached senior executive level of one of the largest multinational conglomerates in the world before early retirement in 1982.

In a 20-year career, he campaigned for Surrey MPs in two constituencies and served on borough and county councils in Surrey and Hampshire, ending his political career representing Farnham on Waverley Borough Council from 1999 to 2003.

Growing up in the remote village of Tilshead, surrounded by the military training area of Salisbury Plain, he attended Dauntsey’s public school, where he excelled, particularly at rugby.

He continued to play the sport at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy (commissioned in 1949), and in the Royal Artillery. However, after a tour of duty in Malaysia (then Malaya), he decided to join BAT’s ‘leaf’ operation, seeking further opportunities to travel abroad.

His first posting was to Hong Kong in 1951, later moving on to Bombay, Singapore and Khartoum. The glamour of the expatriate lifestyle contrasted strongly with the very real danger of crisis-torn locations such as Kuala Lumpur in the 1950s and Lagos in the 1970s.

After the breakdown of order in Congo (then Zaire) in 1975, Graham narrowly escaped the regime’s military police and returned to the UK to take up a desk at BAT’s headquarters in Millbank, making it to the verge of the board before early retirement in 1982.

His free-market beliefs inclined him to become an early and ardent Thatcherite, organising fundraising in the 1979 campaign of North West Surrey MP Michael Grylls, then standing successfully as a Conservative candidate for Surrey Heath Borough Council and Surrey County Council. He was impatient of political impasse, and once he chose a side in a controversial issue, he pushed it hard.

Moving to Runfold in 1994, Mr Lambert switched to the South West Surrey Conservative Association. Energetic and charismatic, he organised events and fundraising for local MP Virginia Bottomley, particularly during the tight general election of 2001. He was elected to Waverley Borough council in 1999 by the narrowest of margins.

He campaigned hard to represent the Farnham Moor Park ward in the 2003 election, but he lost out to the Liberal Democrats and retired from active politics.

He married Rosalie in 1955 at St Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta, India, and had four children before separating in 1983. He later embarked on a new relationship with his partner Joan, becoming a mentor to her two children.

Graham found a new love for golf, and it soon became a passion for the rest of his life. He was a member of Worplesdon Golf Club for 40 years, and the Royal and Ancient. He loved dogs, his garden and a good pint of beer and walked frequently on Puttenham Common.