Personal
He married the actress Phyllis Konstam in 1931, after meeting her on a transatlantic liner while travelling for the US Open, and together they were one of the celebrity couples of the age. Austin played tennis with Charlie Chaplin, was a friend of Daphne du Maurier, Ronald Colman and Harold Lloyd, and met both Queen Mary and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Austin and his wife worked for the cause of the Oxford Group. According to Austin's friend Peter Ustinov, Austin was "disgracefully ostracised by the All-England Club because he was a conscientious objector". In fact, he served as a private in the US Army Air Force, 1943-45. A voting member of the Membership Committee of the All-England Club had been removed from the Cambridge tennis team during Austin's captaincy, and used the excuse of Austin's alleged proselytism for the Oxford Group as an excuse for denying him reinstatement in the All-England Club after a lapse of dues payment. His membership of the club was restored in 1984, the year the obstructing member died.
Only during Austin's tenure in the Air Force did he discover that he suffered from Gilbert's Syndrome, which explained his occasional and sudden fatigue on the court.
Austin's autobiography, written with his wife, A Mixed Double, was published in 1969.
After a serious fall in 1995 Austin moved to a nursing home at Coulsdon, Surrey. He died in 2000 on his 94th birthday. Just a few months earlier, he had joined other past Wimbledon champions and finalists on Wimbledon's Centre Court for a millennium-year parade of champions.
Austin was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1997.
Read more about this topic: Bunny Austin
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