Anthony Wagner was born in London on 6 September 1908 and was a King's Scholar at Eton, where he became captain of the school. He read classics at Balliol, again as a scholar, and when he came down in 1931 with a third in Greats, he entered the College of Arms as Portcullis Pursuivant. From Portcullis he rose to be Richmond Herald in 1943 and Garter King of Arms in 1961. On reaching the age of 70 in 1978, he conformed to tradition and resigned as Garter to be appointed to the less demanding office of Clarenceux King of Arms, which he retained for life. The war years were spent first in the War Office and then in the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, where he worked on the guidelines for listing historic buildings. Though Wagner dallied briefly with the idea of remaining in the Ministry, happily he returned to the College of Arms in 1946 to take over the extensive practice of Alfred Butler, Windsor Herald, where he trained a number of skilled and academically well-qualified assistants who are now officers of arms. Wagner participated in state openings of Parliament for five decades and while still Portcullis Pursuivant led the coronation procession of George VI in Westminster Abbey.

As Garter he was in charge of the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill and the investiture at Caernarvon of the Prince of Wales. While dutifully carrying out such ceremonies despite his innate shyness, Wagner displayed considerable financial acumen in reviving the fortunes of the College. He established the College of Arms Trust to fund the building's maintenance and repair and the Marshalcy Crown Monies Account through which the Inland Revenue allowed payments for the corporate purposes of the College to be paid out free from personal taxation. Popular interest in heraldry was promoted with the opening of the Heralds Museum in the Tower of London in 1979, although this was a compromise forced on Wagner by financial strictures.

He had originally hoped to build a museum adjacent to the seventeeth century College in Queen Victoria Street to display the College's many treasures, of which his knowledge was unrivalled. His publications, too, helped to revive the scholarly reputation of the College, beginning with Historic Heraldry and Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages, both published in 1939, and the massive Heralds of England, in 1967. He was General Editor of the Antiquaries' Aspilogia series, his own Catalogue of English Medieval Rolls of Arms, vol. l, appearing in 1950; and the on-going project, Dictionary of British Arms, of which two volumes have now been published (1992 and 1996), owes much to Wagner's vision, persistence and long chairmanship of the Croft Lyons Committee. Although naturally shy and withdrawn Wagner served on many committees. He was for twenty-five years on the Royal Mint Advisory Committee; president of the Chelsea Society 1967-73; a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery 1973-80; the Society's representative on the Council of the National Trust 1953-74; master of the Vintners' Company 1973-4 and chairman of the trustees of the Marc Fitch Fund 1971-7. Wagner and Marc Fitch, F.S.A., were old friends drawn together by their interest in ancient buildings and genealogy. They also engineered, together with Professor George Zarnecki, F.S.A., of the Courtauld Institute, the Antiquaries' first coup d'état for more than a hundred years. Most unusually, on St George's Day 1959, the apartments were bursting at the seams and the air at the Ballot for the election of Officers and Council was electrifying, rather than the more normally soporific. Sir Mortimer Wheeler had completed his Presidency and Professor Ian Richmond was proposed in his place, with Dr Joan Evans as Director. Many Fellows thought that the time had come to elect a medievalist as President and, though some probably felt that a woman President was unthinkable after 250 years of male domination, reason prevailed and Joan Evans was duly elected by a large majority after a cliff-hanger of a ballot which kept the scrutators busy for an uncomfortably long time and the Fellows from their Anniversary tea. For the holder of a wholly male office dating from 1415, this was no mean accomplishment and Wagner was content with the part he had played in it. He was an assiduous diner-out and belonged to the Society of Dilettanti and the Roxburghe Club. In his more leisured days as Clarenceux, he turned his attention to his own nineteenth-century high church antecedents who left their mark on their home town, Brighton, and, with Anthony Dale, F.S.A., published The Wagners of Brighton (1983). Though left blind in 1984 after a serious illness, Wagner published his autobiography A Herald's World in 1988 and continued to attend meetings of the Croft Lyons Committee and to work at the college until a week before he died, invariably supported by his devoted wife, Gillian, who always appeared elegant, serene and solicitous throughout Wagner's final, afflicted decade. He died on 5 May 1995.

Honours

• 1978 Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath
• 1975 Honourary Fellow, Royal Heraldry Society of Canada
• 1961 Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
• 1953 Commander of the Royal Victorian Order