Born in Harrow, London in 1931, as Brian Frederick Brindley, he was educated at Stowe School, after which he completed his National Service in Germany.

He then entered Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Modern History, and was a contemporary of Ned Sherrin and Alan Bennett.

During his time in Oxford, he wrote a 17th-century style masque, Porci ante Margeritam ("Swine before a Pearl"), which was performed for Princess Margaret.

"[7] The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described Holy Trinity as a "dull Gothic box"; but it was one which Brindley greatly enlivened.

Other items included a Martin Travers high altar (in the form of a gilded sarcophagus), designed for Nashdom Abbey, which Brindley installed in the Lady chapel.

[15] In the summer of 1989, the News of the World published a front-page article which incorporated a secretly recorded conversation in which Brindley fantasized about young men.

He remarked of it: "I felt as if I had been a commercial traveller who had been selling vacuum cleaners for 30 years, only to discover suddenly that they didn't work".

[23] A number of his friends collaborated in the production of an appreciation of his life, edited by Damian Thompson: Loose Canon: A Portrait of Brian Brindley (Continuum, 2004) ISBN 9780826474186.