in the Coventry sporting world, remaining involved with various clubs and associations throughout his life. His love of amateur football, beginning with his playing for Foleshill Great Heath Football Club in his youth, was a passion shared by his wife, Emma, and which culminated in his becoming vice-president of Coventry City Football Club. He was also chairman of Coventry and Warwickshire Motor Club, vice-president of Coventry Cricket Club, and a member the Coventry Hearsall and Coventry Golf Clubs. A committed philanthropist, in his role as chairman of the Coventry Hospital Carnival Committee, Grindlay oversaw the organisation of 16 carnivals and 2 "Godiva" processions that raised more than £60,000 for the hospital, attracting visitors from around the world and to wide public acclaim, before it was eventually taken over by the government. It was at one of these processions that his second son, Alfred Stephen Chaplin Grindlay, would meet his future wife, Frances Phyllis Burchell, who as an accomplished horse rider played the role of Lady Godiva. He also contributed to the hospital by sitting on both its General and House Committees. In addition to his works with the city council, Grindlay was a Freemason like many of the wider Grindlay family, and contributed to many charities and philanthropic projects through his membership of the Trinity Lodge and Trinity Royal Arch Chapter."Few public men have had a busier life than Mr. Grindlay, the ramifications of whose work embrace practically every phase of civic, social, business, sporting and philanthropic activity." – Coventry Evening Telegraph, 1940Grindlay was a Methodist and while living in Foleshill, was an active member of the Free Methodist Church on Station Street West, formerly Carpenter's Lane, and held all of the posts that were open to laymen. In his later years he went on to become the President of the Coventry and District Free Church Council. In 1941, William Michael Maddocks, son of Sir Henry Maddocks, asked Grindlay to write the foreword to his commemorative novel, The City We Loved – Coventry, published in 1942, which details the story of the destruction of Coventry's medieval centre by the 1940 and 1941 blitzkrieg campaigns of Nazi Germany. Public honours In 1943, Grindlay was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his work as Chairman of the Coventry Saving Committee and Chairman of the City Redevelopment Committee. Three years later in 1946 he was made a