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Sir Jeremy Morse
February 5, 2016
In my collection there is one book whose listing is:
Morse, J. Chess Problems: Tasks and Records, Faber & Faber, 1995, 381 p
I bought it in 2014 and, regrettably, forgot to record the price.
I was vaguely aware that Morse was a member of the British Chess Problem Society. And, as for buying a problem book, one always thinks that in one’s retirement that some enjoyable time might be spent on problems and endgame studies.
Today, I found that Sir Jeremy Morse had died and that his obituary was at the Telegraph’s website:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...-obituary.html
Of course, a man’s life is much more than one book or one hobby. He had a fascinating life. Some extracts from that obit:
Sir Jeremy Morse, the former chairman of Lloyds Bank who has died aged 87, possessed one of the finest minds of his generation in the City of London.
Morse was a classical scholar and a quintessential Wykehamist. He was also a chess expert, and a lover of poetry and brain-teaser puzzles. In a different age he might have been a bishop rather than a banker. Inspector Morse, the donnish detective invented by Colin Dexter, was said to have been named after him, and partially modelled on him in personality.
Journalists and fellow bankers could be disconcerted by Morse’s unworldly manner. “I’m somebody who’s never borrowed in my life,” he remarked in a television interview, at the height of the 1980s credit boom. “I think rather like the prime minister (Margaret Thatcher), whom I believe thinks that it’s wrong for individuals to borrow.”
But he did not see eye-to-eye with Mrs Thatcher in any other respect – he was too didactic for her taste, and was suspected of Keynesian sympathies. She neither offered him the governorship of the Bank of England in 1983, nor backed him as a candidate for the directorship of the IMF in 1989 – although he was overwhelmingly qualified for both jobs.
_______
Christopher Jeremy Morse was born on December 10 1928. His forebears, for five generations, were Norfolk brewers: their own business, founded in 1780, became part of Steward & Patteson, at one time the biggest brewery in East Anglia. Had it not been absorbed by Watneys in 1968, Morse would eventually have returned to Norwich to run the business.
Young Jeremy was educated at Winchester, where he was head boy. Interviewed in The Wykehamist many years later, he confessed that the naughtiest thing he had ever done at school was to take a bus to Southampton to visit his uncle. According to one classmate, the senior classics master would consult him as an authority, but by his own account he was merely “good at exams”.
After National Service with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, he went up to New College, Oxford, as a scholar. There he created a university record by winning five of the seven major classical prizes, including, in the same year, the Chancellor’s prizes for both Latin verse and Latin prose. Having taken the expected Double First, he was elected a fellow of All Souls in 1953.
By then, however, motivated by the assumption that he would be required to run the family brewery, he felt drawn towards commercial life. He became a “cadet”, or management trainee, at Glyn, Mills & Co, a small bank (now part of Royal Bank of Scotland) with a reputation for grooming City high-flyers.
He became a director of Glyn, Mills in 1964, but the next year he was recruited by Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England, to become an executive director of the Bank – the second youngest in history.
_______
Morse was a past president of the British Bankers’ Association, the Banking Federation of the European Community and, reflecting his extra-curricular interests, the Classical Association and the British Chess Problem Society.
He was an international chess judge, and in retirement published Chess Problems: Tasks and Records, a collection of some 800 challenges, many of them of his own devising. He was particularly fond of the two-mover, the purest of all chess exercises.
His other passion was poetry – during his National Service he had shocked senior officers by telling them that his ambition in life was simply to be a poet. He had an affinity with T S Eliot, who had also worked for Lloyds Bank and found satisfaction in the routine of banking work; Morse was able to quote much of The Waste Land from memory. When the wife of a Japanese colleague painted his portrait, he sent her a haiku, a traditional three-line poem, by way of thanks.
He was a devout churchman, sometimes preaching on City ethics. As well as London he had a country life on the Mills estate in Gloucestershire, which he loved. He also relished cryptic crossword puzzles and was a respected composer of them.
Sir Jeremy Morse, born December 10 1928, died February 4 2016
February 5, 2016
In my collection there is one book whose listing is:
Morse, J. Chess Problems: Tasks and Records, Faber & Faber, 1995, 381 p
I bought it in 2014 and, regrettably, forgot to record the price.
I was vaguely aware that Morse was a member of the British Chess Problem Society. And, as for buying a problem book, one always thinks that in one’s retirement that some enjoyable time might be spent on problems and endgame studies.
Today, I found that Sir Jeremy Morse had died and that his obituary was at the Telegraph’s website:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...-obituary.html
Of course, a man’s life is much more than one book or one hobby. He had a fascinating life. Some extracts from that obit:
Sir Jeremy Morse, the former chairman of Lloyds Bank who has died aged 87, possessed one of the finest minds of his generation in the City of London.
Morse was a classical scholar and a quintessential Wykehamist. He was also a chess expert, and a lover of poetry and brain-teaser puzzles. In a different age he might have been a bishop rather than a banker. Inspector Morse, the donnish detective invented by Colin Dexter, was said to have been named after him, and partially modelled on him in personality.
Journalists and fellow bankers could be disconcerted by Morse’s unworldly manner. “I’m somebody who’s never borrowed in my life,” he remarked in a television interview, at the height of the 1980s credit boom. “I think rather like the prime minister (Margaret Thatcher), whom I believe thinks that it’s wrong for individuals to borrow.”
But he did not see eye-to-eye with Mrs Thatcher in any other respect – he was too didactic for her taste, and was suspected of Keynesian sympathies. She neither offered him the governorship of the Bank of England in 1983, nor backed him as a candidate for the directorship of the IMF in 1989 – although he was overwhelmingly qualified for both jobs.
_______
Christopher Jeremy Morse was born on December 10 1928. His forebears, for five generations, were Norfolk brewers: their own business, founded in 1780, became part of Steward & Patteson, at one time the biggest brewery in East Anglia. Had it not been absorbed by Watneys in 1968, Morse would eventually have returned to Norwich to run the business.
Young Jeremy was educated at Winchester, where he was head boy. Interviewed in The Wykehamist many years later, he confessed that the naughtiest thing he had ever done at school was to take a bus to Southampton to visit his uncle. According to one classmate, the senior classics master would consult him as an authority, but by his own account he was merely “good at exams”.
After National Service with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, he went up to New College, Oxford, as a scholar. There he created a university record by winning five of the seven major classical prizes, including, in the same year, the Chancellor’s prizes for both Latin verse and Latin prose. Having taken the expected Double First, he was elected a fellow of All Souls in 1953.
By then, however, motivated by the assumption that he would be required to run the family brewery, he felt drawn towards commercial life. He became a “cadet”, or management trainee, at Glyn, Mills & Co, a small bank (now part of Royal Bank of Scotland) with a reputation for grooming City high-flyers.
He became a director of Glyn, Mills in 1964, but the next year he was recruited by Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England, to become an executive director of the Bank – the second youngest in history.
_______
Morse was a past president of the British Bankers’ Association, the Banking Federation of the European Community and, reflecting his extra-curricular interests, the Classical Association and the British Chess Problem Society.
He was an international chess judge, and in retirement published Chess Problems: Tasks and Records, a collection of some 800 challenges, many of them of his own devising. He was particularly fond of the two-mover, the purest of all chess exercises.
His other passion was poetry – during his National Service he had shocked senior officers by telling them that his ambition in life was simply to be a poet. He had an affinity with T S Eliot, who had also worked for Lloyds Bank and found satisfaction in the routine of banking work; Morse was able to quote much of The Waste Land from memory. When the wife of a Japanese colleague painted his portrait, he sent her a haiku, a traditional three-line poem, by way of thanks.
He was a devout churchman, sometimes preaching on City ethics. As well as London he had a country life on the Mills estate in Gloucestershire, which he loved. He also relished cryptic crossword puzzles and was a respected composer of them.
Sir Jeremy Morse, born December 10 1928, died February 4 2016
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