Stephen Panton - Telegraph In the 1970s and 1980s, Panton enjoyed several overseas visits as part of his job. At a conference in the Philippines with members of a select committee, Panton successfully spread the rumour that the Soviet Union had invaded Poland, with the result that the Polish and the Soviet delegations refused to sit in the same room. On another visit, with the Parliamentary Assembly to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Panton was editing the summary report in a hot, stuffy office, alongside clerks from other member states. Hundreds of small birds were in bushes outside the window, chirruping loudly. Increasingly irritated, Panton hurled a book at one of the bushes. The birds were silenced momentarily, but soon started again. Minutes went by. Panton snapped. To the astonishment of his French colleagues, he grabbed a hat stand, jumped out of the window, and ran from bush to bush, beating the leaves as hard as he could. Stephen Alastair Lumley Panton, the son of a wartime RAF pilot, was born at Bedford on June 1 1940. He attended Bedford School and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Pembroke College, Oxford, before passing the Civil Service entrance exam in 1963 to take the single post of Clerk that was available that year. Panton kept his political views to himself. But he was dismayed by the progressive erosion of the authority of Parliament in the face of the prerogatives of the European Union. He frequently used to remark that this had happened without the knowledge, or the support, of the public as a whole. As well as reading Trollope, he was very knowledgeable about natural history and astronomy. He loved drinking pink gins, building model aeroplanes (of which he acquired an impressive collection), and doting on his grandchildren. His final years were marred by ill health. Above all, he never got over a road accident in London in 2007 when a bus ran out of control, killing his wife Elizabeth, whom he had married in 1965. One of his twin daughters, Sarah, was badly injured and his granddaughter Pollyanna lost a leg below the knee in the same crash. The accident prompted Panton to move from Shropshire to Norfolk to be near his family. He died with a copy of Trollope's Mr Scarborough's Family by his side. His four children survive him. Stephen Panton, born June 1 1940, died August 24 2012