ONE of the country’s foremost Olympians has died, aged 82.

Major Henry William Hoskyns MBE, known as Bill, was a top-class fencer with numerous world and Olympic titles.

His fellow fencers at the West Dorset Fencing Club in Bridport paid tribute to the man who was not only a great sportsman but a kind and generous human being.

Club founder Shirley Parker, who was on two Olympic teams with him in Rome and Tokyo in 1960 and 1964, said: “Bill was always the perfect English gentleman.

“He won so many competitions, but no-one heard him say a word that could have been taken as conceited.

“He won seven British national championship titles at three different weapons, and many major competitions abroad against the world’s best, but he will also be remembered for his willingness to help young fencers and to support our club.

“I have known him for more than 50 years and he just hadn’t got an enemy in the world.”

Bridport fencing club’s honorary president Allan Jay was a life-long friend, having first fenced with him at school.

They were both fiercely competitive and each went on to achieve considerable success.

Mr Hoskyns, from North Perrott, was educated at Eton and Oxford.

He spent so much time fencing at Oxford he graduated with a fourth in agriculture but went on become the first true farmer in the family and built a ‘modern’ farm shop 30 years before the idea took off.

He was also a pioneer of farming co-operatives.

Mr Hoskyns represented Great Britain in six Olympic Games. He was world epee champion in 1958, won an Olympic silver medal as part of the team in the Rome Olympics in 1960, and won a individual second silver at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

Over his fencing career he took nine Commonwealth gold medals, and held a record never surpassed in British fencing.

He was the world champion in epee in 1958, competing in a total of seven world championships from 1955-1967, and won a record aggregate of nine golds in the Commonwealth Games in both epee and sabre, although had to settle for silver in foil.

In the British championships he was the most successful fencer ever, with 21 medals and eight times champion including winner of the British epee title four times, also runner-up four times and third twice.

He won the foil title three times and the sabre title once and making him only the second man to win all three championships.

As a major in the army, he was inter-services champion at all three weapons in 1964.

He finished his international career by winning the Duren epee tournament in 1973 and 1974 and coming second in Oslo in 1978, aged 47.

He won a bronze medal at the Millennium Veterans’ world championships in 1998.

Bill was appointed MBE and a vice president of British Fencing and was recently elected to the FIE Centennial Hall of Fame.

Bill was thrilled to be invited to be on stage for the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Games but could not attend due to his failing health.

He married Georgina Howard De Cardial Findlay and they had five children, Karina, Jonathan, twins Sophie and Celia and Dominic and ten grandchildren.