Count Zygmunt Zamoyski - Telegraph One of two children, Zygmunt Zamoyski was born on November 11 1937 to Count Andrew Zamoyski, a dashingly handsome, talented but unstable man who had been born in Poland but educated at Ampleforth, thereafter spending much of his time in England. The family had been influential in Polish politics since the 16th century when an ancestor, Jan Zamoyski, hired the Paduan architect Bernardo Morando to build the town of Zamosc in south-east Poland - now a Unesco World Heritage Site. Zygmunt's mother, Priscilla Stucley, came from an Anglo-Norman family and Zygmunt was brought up at a Stucley family house, Wolfeton, near Dorchester in Dorset. Zamoyski then read for the Bar but did not complete his exams and went off instead to work as a teacher in Sarawak. Returning home in the 1970s, he studied for the Bar again, this time living in London with a cousin whose daughter recalled him snuggled in a postman's sack, with a hot water bottle at his feet and wearing earplugs made of sink plungers, poring over thick tomes. After giving up the Bar for a second time, Zamoyski drifted from job to job. He did a bit of teaching in Bournemouth, and became a part-time caretaker, all the while cultivating a well-deserved reputation for harmless eccentricity. This was best displayed during a stint on a dustcart near Yeovil, when it was his duty to count rubbish bags left out by businesses. As there were few business in rural Somerset he worried that "there would be little or no enumeration to be done" and asked if he could help load the rubbish. He was assured that, while this was not strictly his duty, it was not prohibited. He had a morbid fear of losing his memory and, while working as a caretaker, pinned up reminder notices to himself all round the house: "SHAVE," "BURGLAR ALARM" and so on. Once, when suffering from a bad back, he rigged up a contraption to enable him to watch the television via a mirror, while lying on the floor. He also used a mirror while writing letters (backwards) to his cousin, so that she also had to use a mirror to read them. In 1989, after the end of communism, Zamoyski went to live and work in Poland. He learned Polish from scratch, no mean feat for a man in his fifties, and taught English as a foreign language in Zamosc, where he became friends with his cousin, the Mayor, Marcin Zamoyski. He also taught in Warsaw, where he became increasingly appalled by the common practice among Polish students of cheating in exams. In 1998 he opened a travelling "anti-exam cheating" exhibition in a brave effort to eradicate the practice; the exhibits included a "vestment" of his own devising, without pockets, for students to wear in exams. A friend once pointedly bought him The Book of Heroic Failures for his birthday. Zygmunt Zamoyski married, in 2005, Patricia Grobow, an American, who survives him with his sister Betka. Count Zygmunt Zamoyski, born November 11 1937, died September 26 2012