Leonard Ingrams

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Leonard Ingrams (1 September 1941 – 27 July 2005), merchant banker and opera festival founder/impresario.

Leonard Ingrams was the youngest of four sons. His parents were Leonard St Clair Ingrams and Victoria (née Reid). His mother was musical and he started to learn the violin at the age of six. Later he played in the National Youth Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent. He was educated at Stonyhurst, where he was inspired by Peter Levi, and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He gained firsts in Classical Moderations and Greats. Subsequently he taught classics at Queen Mary College, University of London from 1965 to 1967.

Ingrams was a member of Baring Brothers, a long-established merchant bank, where he was an international financier. He joined in 1967 and become the Managing Director in 1975.

In 1982, Ingrams bought Garsington Manor on the edge of the village of Garsington south of Oxford, England. He has later become well-known for founding Garsington Opera in 1989, an annual season of opera in the manor gardens. He also allowed the local Amateur Dramatics Society and the Church use the grounds.

Ingrams married Rosalind Moore in 1964. He died after a heart attack at the age of 63 in 2005, while driving home from a performance of Verdi's Otello at Glyndebourne. They had a son and three daughters. Ingrams also has a surviving elder brother, Richard Ingrams, one of the founders of the satirical magazine Private Eye.