ADRIAN Moyes, who has died aged 84, was a pioneering force in international development across two decades at Oxfam.

The charity’s first development secretary, he was also later the founding director of its public affairs unit, spearheading ambitious projects across the globe.

In addition Mr Moyes was a passionate environmentalist and an active member of the Eynsham community for 40 years.

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Adrian Moyes was born on April 29, 1934, in London.

He was brought up in Hampshire and the South East and had two older siblings, Bridget and Martin.

From 1952 Mr Moyes did two years of national service in the Royal Navy as a midshipman, before reading history at Cambridge University.

His father was an engineer and his mother a housewife, but both died when he was a student.

In 1956, Mr Moyes worked with refugees on the Hungarian border following the failed uprising against Soviet domination - an indication of his future field of work.

After his studies, he travelled the world as a freelance journalist, spending time with the Kayhan International newspaper in Iran.

Mr Moyes returned to the UK to pursue a career in international development, working with leading thinktank the Overseas Development Institute, from 1961 to 1966.

There, his report, ‘Volunteers in Development’, led to amateur aid workers being replaced by skills-based professionals.

In 1968, Mr Moyes married his first wife Sally, and two years later they moved to Eynsham.

The couple’s two children, Sasha and Simon, were born in 1970 and 1971 respectively.

After four years at the Social Science Research Council in the late 1960s, Mr Moyes took up a post with the National Innovations Centre between 1970 to 1972.

His next stop was Oxfam, where he became development secretary in 1972 with the brief of re-focusing the charity’s 20 different area programmes.

Mr Moyes drew on innovatory approaches he had encountered at initiatives in the developing world, including Brazil and Tanzania.

These programmes were seen as groundbreaking for all development practitioners and helped pioneer new ways of understanding anti-poverty actions.

In 1977, Mr Moyes worked in the field himself for a year, becoming Oxfam country director for Tanzania, based in the city of Arusha.

On his return to Oxford he became director of the new Oxfam public affairs unit, which took on public authorities and private companies to champion the interests of the world’s poorest people.

Under his leadership, the public affairs unit improved countless lives with several reports.

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Around this time, Mr Moyes met his second wife, Sue Raikes – the pair were together from 1980 and married in 2008.

In 1990, Mr Moyes explored the impact of the European Union’s Common Agriculture Policy on farmers in the developing world for his final Oxfam project.

After leaving the charity, he set up a pioneering horse-tourism business Bridle Rides.

In 1992, Mr Moyes published ‘Riding the Countryside – Bridleways and Horse-tourism in Britain and France’ for the Oxford Centre for Tourism and Leisure Studies at Oxford Brookes University.

He displayed the same environmental interest in helping establish Green TEA (Transition Eynsham Area), a community group striving for a greener village.

Mr Moyes spearheaded Green TEA’s scheme to plant apple trees around Eynsham, with 40 planted in the last five years.

Over this same period he began to suffer from the rare brain disorder PSP (Progressive Supranuclear Palsy), but continued to play an active part within the Eynsham community until his final years.

Mr Moyes died peacefully at his Eynsham home on November 27 and is survived by his second wife Sue Raikes and his two children.

A celebration of his life was held on December 9.

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