Harman Grisewood

His father was born on 20 Oct 1879 at Gatwick House, Billericay, Essex, educated at Beaumont, Downside School, and Christ Church, Oxford; and served in the Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, the Fourth Hussars and 11th Bn Royal Sussex Regiment.

He served as Aide-de-camp to George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston in South Africa in the Boer war.

His mother was the youngest daughter (3 August 1881) of Henry O'Connell Cardozo, C.I.E. and had been brought up in India.

Harman Joseph Gerard Grisewood, CBE (8 February 1906 – 8 January 1997) was an English radio actor, radio and television executive, novelist and non-fiction writer.

He acted as literary executor to the poet David Jones, a lifelong friend.

He was educated at Ampleforth College and Worcester College, Oxford.

Harman had two younger brothers, Peter Henry (15 Jun 1907 – 1973) and Gabriel Thomas (23 Mar 1910 – 17 Feb 1986) who was known as Tucks.

In 1909 he became Privy Chamberlain of Sword and Cape to Pope Pius X an honour which is known now as a Gentlemen of His Holiness.

He was a handsome, unreliable, sociable wanderer who Harman described as 'one of Baudelaire's true travellers'.

His younger sister Mary Magdalen Lucy Teresa (11 Dec 1911 – 1950) was known as Missie.

In 1916, aged 10, he was sent to Ampleforth College, along with his younger brothers.

He joined the young BBC not long after graduating in 1927.

In 1929 a friend from his Oxford days invited him read a chapter of Ivanhoe on The Children's Hour for the BBC at Savoy Hill House.

He was paid three guineas so he resigned from Fortnum and Mason and spent the next four years acting in radio plays with the BBC Repertory Company.

He performed with Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson at a time when Val Gielgud had just taken over the drama department.

Grisewood's most taxing effort was in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II when, during the interval, he rushed to the Variety Studio to perform a Vaudeville song in John Watt's show.

In 1933 he joined the BBC staff as an announcer and continued until 1936.

He embarked on an arduous self-education plan catching up on T.S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson whose Progress and Religion had great influence on him.

Jacques Maritain's neo-Thomistic Art and Scholasticism became the central text for Grisewood and his Catholic friends.

Like Eric Gill, who they admired they redefined the autonomy of art, denying the conventional distinction between the sacred and profane.

Grisewood wrote "we do not believe the art of Salvator Rosa was religious because he painted so many pious Madonnas and the art of Renoir was not because he painted none."

They believed that lowly practices such as plumbing and feeding pigs were not to be despised and that the BBC announcing was part of the scheme of things.

Disillusionment set in over Edward VIII's abdication crisis.

He was controller of the BBC Third Programme from 1948 to 1952.

In 1960 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and also became a Knight of Grace and Devotion (Knight of Magistral Grace) of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

The BBC presenter Freddie Grisewood was a cousin.

Harman Grisewood was born at Wormleybury Manor in Hertfordshire to Lieutenant Colonel Harman Joseph Mary Grisewood and Lucille Genevieve Cardozo.

He is credited with the idea in 1966 for The Money Programme.

In his autobiography, One Thing at a Time (1968), he described an outing with his brother, nanny, nursemaid and pram, when they were stoned by villagers as they approached the Anglican church.

The nursery was the centre of the children's world, whilst adults and children were 'on equal terms' in the chapel.

A devout Roman Catholic, he bemoaned the demise of the Tridentine Latin Mass in 1970 but remained loyal to the Church as he explained in Why Am I Still a Catholic, published in 1980.

His grandmother Concetta Messina lived mainly at the Villa Marguerite at Grasse, France, where she ran an eccentric household.

After his Oxford days he spent time at Grasse; in Cyprus where his family had property; and with an uncle in Malta.

The classroom became his refuge and he befriended Father Bernard McElligot who was a key figure in both the monastery and school for over 25 years, and who remained a friend until his death in 1990.

He won a history scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford and became a leading member of Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), where he befriended Robert Speaight, Sir Gyles Isham, 12th Baronet, Peter Fleming, Rupert Hart-Davis, Baron John Redcliffe-Maud and Christopher Sykes.

In his last year he shared rooms with Sir Denys Buckley who became a High Court judge, and to whom Grisewood said he owed a love of English ways.

Theodore Komisarjevsky cast him as King Lear in his OUDS production.

He left Oxford with little sense of direction and took a job writing labels at Fortnum and Mason in London where he earned £3 per week.

Very much part of the Brideshead generation, he spent many of his evenings at Lord Kinross's parties at Yeomans Row, Knightsbridge.

When he was young the family moved to the Prebendal in Thame, Oxfordshire, a rambling 13th century house, much of it in ruins, which had its own chapel and resident Catholic priest – Father Randolph Traill.