Loder was the son of
John Loder, 2nd Baron Wakehurst and his wife Margaret Tennant, daughter of
Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet. He was educated at
Eton College and
Cambridge University. From 1957 to 1966 he was employed by the
Anglo American Corporation in
Johannesburg and
Lusaka. While in Johannesburg he helped run Union Artists, a black theatre group that played to mixed audiences in apartheid South Africa. In 1959 he founded the
African Arts Trust, which supports black artists from
South Africa. When he returned to London, Loder became treasurer of the
Institute of Contemporary Arts and later its chairman in the 1970s. From 1968 he was a Trustee and for 10 years chair of the
Mental Health Foundation, for which service he was appointed a
CBE in the
1989 Birthday Honours. With the backing of
Lord Rothschild, he built up a business with 2,000 employees in 30 countries. In 1982, he became executive chairman of the literary agency
Curtis Brown. The workshops became an annual event, and Loder later helped organise similar workshops in South Africa,
Zimbabwe,
Botswana,
Mozambique,
Zambia,
Jamaica and
Namibia. From 1990 he ran a workshop at Shave Farm in
Somerset. ==References==