page_title: Robert Clark (businessman)
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Clark (businessman) / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Salisbury Cathedral from the West This is a photo of listed building number 1023581.
context_page_description: Sir Robert Anthony "Bob" Clark DSC was a British naval officer and businessman. Clark attended King's College, Cambridge before leaving at the age of 18 to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War. Discovered to be colour blind he was relegated to non-seagoing posts, a prospect he found unappealing. He volunteered for service with the Special Operations Executive and saw active service in Italy, first on amphibious missions and later as a liaison officer with partisans in the Piedmont Mountains. Clark was captured by the Germans, and was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his gallantry.
  A chance meeting after the war led to a position at the law firm of Slaughter & May, where he was soon made a partner. He switched career to become a merchant banker with Hill Samuel, where he developed an expertise in company mergers and acquisitions. Clark acted as chairman or director for numerous firms and sat on many governments bodies and committees. Clark met Robert Maxwell in 1969 when Maxwell attempted to outbid Rupert Murdoch for the News of the World, starting a lifelong acquaintance.
context_section_description: Clark and his family lived for almost 50 years at a house in Surrey, the former home of horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll, that had been designed by Edwin Lutyens and which Clark described as "the best investment I ever made". Clark was a keen antiquarian, collecting old books and keeping a record of each one that he read. He maintained an interest in sport as well as the opera, having acted as director of the English National Opera from 1983 to 1987. He collected teddy bears, having more than 300 in total (including Falla), and was also interested in the life of Captain Cook, retracing one of his voyages himself. Clark was vice-chairman of the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal. He was contacted in 1991 by Curetti, the Italian partisan who first helped him out of a tree in the war, and the pair visited each other regularly thereafter. Clark died on 3 January 2013.
caption: Clark was on the board of the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal
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