Patricia Cookson

Patricia Cookson, who has died aged 66, founded the villa rental company Corfu Villas, transforming a rustic backwater of Greece into a favourite destination for Britain’s well-off – to the extent that it became known as “Kensington-on-Sea”.

The north-east corner of Corfu has, under the aegis of the Cooksons, attracted a host of celebrities and grandees, ranging from the singer Bryan Ferry and the actor Jude Law, to the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and the Duke of Cambridge, who learnt to waterski while staying in a CV villa.

Despite the smooth operation it became, the company was as rough and ready as the island itself when it started out in the 1970s. Its “brochure” consisted of a few photographs pasted into a notebook, which prospective clients were kindly requested to return when they were done. The first London office was located above a sex shop in Fulham. Meanwhile, out on Corfu, an array of early mishaps earned the firm the nickname “Faulty Travel”.

Once, for example, a villa was double-booked (quite a feat, considering there was then only a handful of houses on the books). Ingeniously, Patricia’s brother Mikey persuaded the maid to meet the second group of arrivals at the gate of the house, brandishing a dead grass snake. He then popped up, to explain that the place was infested, and guide them towards a nearby hotel. On later learning the truth, the clients stormed into the office, only to find it empty. Their rep was cowering in a cupboard.

On another occasion, the enticing offer of “unlimited” quantities of free local wine backfired when one guest, an earnest American, turned out to be a recovering alcoholic. The temptation of the generous stash of booze left in the villa proved too much for her, and having disposed of a few bottles, she went out on a riding trip, lost control of her horse, and was carted over the horizon. Her dislodged wig, so the story goes, was left dangling from an olive tree.

She and her outraged husband chose not to rebook. Yet the vast majority of clients felt differently – won over by the lush, steep landscape, the elegant villas picked out by Patricia, and the warm welcome which, setbacks aside, she, her three siblings and her husband Richard invariably extended to clients.

Patricia Ellen Corry Reid was born in Copenhagen in May 13 1946. Her Danish mother and English father, who had met during the Second World War, settled at Beverley in Yorkshire. One consequence of this was that when they were growing up, the three attractive siblings – Patricia, Carole and Jennifer – became known as “the Beverley Sisters”.
After attending Tranby Croft school, Patricia Reid moved to London and enrolled at secretarial college. This led to a job in the records office of the House of Lords, at the top of the 325ft Victoria Tower at the southern end of the Palace of Westminster. There, in 1966, the minuscule skirts sported by her and her best friend Ginny, who also worked at Westminster, stirred Lord Longford to apoplexy. The pair briefly defied the miniskirt ban that ensued, buoyed by the enthusiastic support of less prudish peers.
Soon afterwards Patricia Reid took a job running the discotheque on the QE2. Her travels took her to, among other places, Corfu, with which she instantly fell in love. After two devastating wars, and the severe rule of the Greek Colonels, the island was crying out for foreign investment. Few locals spoke English, and the confident if Anglo-accented Greek that Patricia Reid quickly picked up proved a boon in winning over the suspicious owners of possible rental properties.
After Richard Cookson had quit his job in the City to join her, and the couple married, she became such a figure locally that she earned herself the nickname Cooksena (a feminisation of her new surname). As the family grew, Corfu Villas became more than ever a Cookson affair, their four boys serving at the drinks parties given each week for clients. Later on, their tanned, smiling faces appeared in the (by then far glossier) brochures produced by the burgeoning company.
In the 1980s Corfu Villas extended its reach, setting up offices on other Greek islands, including Spetses, Skiathos and Skopelos. Italy, Spain and Portugal followed, and in the 1990s, Morocco. The name was changed to CV Travel, yet Corfu remained the hub of operations, and the closest to Patricia Cookson’s heart. Apart from providing countless fun-filled family holidays, the company also helped to ensure that the northern tip of Corfu did not go the way of certain other Greek islands (and arguably Corfu’s own southern tip) by falling prey to the ravages of mass tourism.
It was a source of great sadness to her when the break-up of her marriage forced the eventual sale of CV Travel in 2004. More recently, Patricia Cookson had contributed hugely to local projects on the island, including, for instance, the exhibition of Edward Lear’s paintings held last summer in Corfu Town.
Above all, though, she channelled her energies into improving the house she had shared with Richard, the magical Villa Yeraki, perched on the edge of the sea just south of the town of Kassiopi. When they had found it, it had been little more than a boat shed, covered in slime and rust, with a corrugated-iron roof. As she had with Corfu Villas, Patricia Cookson lavished on it all her passion and creativity, and turned it into a thing of beauty.
She is survived by her four sons.
Patricia Cookson, born May 13 1946, died March 31 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10018740/Patricia-Cookson.html