Simon Majaro MBE died peacefully at home in Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, on April 1 aged 95, surrounded by his family.
A former professor and philanthropist, he and his late wife Pamela founded the Cavatina Chamber Music Trust, which has introduced schoolchildren to chamber music.
His daughter Nadine Majaro said: “He was endlessly interested in people. He asked people about their lives and they loved hearing his stories.
“At South Hampstead High where I went to school he was popular among my friends for always knowing their names. He was a real people person, very gregarious.”
Great-grandfather of three, Simon Majaro MBE was a ‘real people person, very gregarious’ said daughter Nadine (Image: David Herman)
Nadine said her father was a man who “changed his purpose in life many times”.
Born in 1929, Simon had a happy childhood in pre-war Jerusalem before moving to London in 1950 to study law at University College London.
He later moved into business and consultancy and onto becoming a professor of marketing.
He married Pamela in 1954 with whom he had two daughters, Nadine and her younger sister Nicola, who died from cystic fibrosis when she was nine.
Nadine said Cavatina Music Trust was a big part of their lives, a passion, which was recognised in 2011 when they were made MBEs for services to music.
The couple ran the trust for 20 years. Pamela died in 2016 and Simon handed the music trust over to Wigmore Hall’s care five years ago.
Simon had a second career making musical instruments. He made 15 instruments including violins, violas and cellos which have all been played by professional musicians, and was working on another when he died.
A man of reinvention, during lockdown he turned to writing novels and novellas.
As a business academic he had published many professional books.
In his retirement, he published Jerusalem’s Doctor of the Poor, a memoir about his father, a Russian refugee doctor in Jerusalem.
Nadine said he met acclaimed spy thriller author John Le Carré at the Villa Bianca restaurant in Perrins Walk “who inspired him to write about his experiences”.
The result was Simon’s first historical thriller Who is Mr. Poliakoff? taking in the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Gulag under Khruschev and secret agents in Israel.
Nadine added: “He wanted to die peacefully at home and that is exactly what happened. My husband, two sons and I were with him.
“His great-grandchildren were very fond of him and we’ll all miss him. But you can’t begrudge somebody wanting to move on at that age.”
Donations can be made to The Cystic Fibrosis Trust and Wigmore Hall for the purpose of supporting the Cavatina Chamber Music Competition.
