Simon Towneley

Who is Simon Towneley?

Sir Simon Peter Edmund Cosmo William Towneley, KCVO, KCSG was born with the surname Koch de Gooreynd, the elder son of a British father of Belgian stock, Alexander L.W. Koch de Gooreynd, and a British mother, also of partial Belgian descent.

Alexander Koch de Gooreynd changed the family name prior to the birth of Towneley's younger brother, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, the journalist. The brothers were raised Catholic, but did not attend denominational schools.

Worsthorne assumed the surname and arms of Towneley, an old recusant family, by royal license. At the time of his wedding, he changed his name and took on the remaining Lancashire inheritance of that family, of which his great-grandmother Caroline Theresa, Lady Abingdon, had been one of the three co-heiresses.

In 1954 he published Venetian Opera in the 17th Century, a seminal study of the field, which played a significant role in the remarkable revival of the Venetian opera repertory in the latter 20th century.