She and husband, Bamber built Grange Park Opera.
‘Christina Gascoigne, who has died aged 87 was an Arabist, photographer and ceramicist whose teenage account of being caught up in the 1958 Lebanon crisis made gripping reading; she also accompanied her polymath husband Bamber Gascoigne, the University Challenge presenter, on countless adventures, contributing to his books and helping him to build an opera house in the grounds of a stately home.’
Daily Telegraph, 27th August 2026
In March 2023 we told how Bamber Gascoigne, already over 80, had unexpectedly inherited West Horsley Place, a 50-room tumbledown Tudor mansion in Surrey from his great aunt Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe (1915-2014) #15070.
They decided they had no alternative but to sell the duchess’s possessions using the £8.8 million proceeds to restore the mansion and build a 700-seat opera house which became in 2017 the home of Grange Park Opera.
Explaining this decision Christina said that she and Bamber both always had a ‘let’s go’ attitude and that Bamber was very susceptible to enthusiasm. “If I said that sounds exciting, he’d go ahead and do it.”
Christina Mary Ditchburn was born in Baghdad, the youngest of four children of Alfred, an administrative inspector at the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, and his wife Gladys. She read Arabic and Persian at Girton College, Cambridge. There she met Bamber at Magdalene College. She is said to have had many admirers, one of whom took her through Iran. Bamber debated whether to go after her. He did and he won her back.
Bamber dreamed of being an actor and their first date was to see The Investigator,which he had adapted for the stage from a radio play. They married in 1965 and “hardly stopped seeing each other for the next 60 years.” Bamber’s career flourished with his 1957 revue Share My Lettuce (Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams) and his role as quiz master of University Challenge from 1962 to 1987.
Christina continued with her photography, her work appearing in The Christians (1977) and in Castles of Britain (1980) alongside her making and selling ceramic pots. Her Georgian house in Richmond looked out onto the Thames; like its owner it was colourful, graceful and attractive.
Anthony Cobbold
