Philip Wayre was born on May 26 1921 and educated at Sherborne School (The Green). He first visited Norfolk when he was 17 and, following service in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, during which he rose to the rank of Lieutenant, he returned to the county to try his hand at farming. After working for a farmer at Mileham, near Dereham, in 1949 he bought his own farm in the village — 400 acres of mixed arable. “I ran it for three or four years until I ran out of money,” he recalled in an interview. “I wasn’t a successful farmer, I wasn’t a good farmer… I didn’t actually go bankrupt but...
