Harman Grisewood

Harman Joseph Gerard Grisewood (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. He joined the young BBC not long after graduating in 1927. He was controller of the BBC Third Programme from 1948 to 1952. He is credited with the idea in 1966 for The Money Programme.

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.

Harman had two younger brothers, Peter Henry (15 June 1907 – 1973) and Gabriel Thomas (23 March 1910 – 17 February 1986) who was known as Tucks. His younger sister Mary Magdalen Lucy Teresa (11 December 1911 – 1950) was known as Missie.

Writing Following his retirement Grisewood was at the centre of a major sensation. His autobiography One Thing at a Time (1968) described the conflict over Anthony Eden's attempt to force the BBC to treat the Suez Crisis of 1956 as a national war. Grisewood claimed that this included a plan to take over the BBC completely quoting Eden's press secretary William Clark. Clark later maintained that the plans had never been so drastic but there was a buzz of scandal and the story was debated in the House of Commons.

At the time in question Sir Ian Jacob, Director-General of the BBC, was absent abroad. Grisewood insisted that differing views of the crisis taken by public and press must be reported in both overseas and UK broadcasts, and that the opposition had a right to reply to Government broadcasts. His influence was crucial in the Governor's decision to resist pressure from Eden and to protect the BBC's tradition of impartiality.

Though a private person he loved feeling in the thick of things, the novelist in him revelling in complex narratives and intrigues. In retirement he reminisced about discussions with Harold Wilson in the dead of night. He published three novels, The Recess, The Last Cab on the Rank, and a spy story Stratagem as well as The Painted Kipper. He possessed a writer's itch producing stories, poetry and long observant funny letters in a lovely flowing hand.

Personal life Grisewood married Margaret Clotilde Bailey in 1940, during the Second World War Blitz on London. They spent their wedding night under the kitchen table in Chelsea with the poet and artist David Jones as bombs fell around them. Jones wrote two poems as wedding gifts, "Prothalamion" and "Epithalamion", which eventually were published in the 2002 collection Wedding Poems. The couple then spent their honeymoon at Pigotts, Eric Gill's craft community set in the beechwood forest at Speen, Buckinghamshire. During his career at the BBC he lived in London and had one daughter.

The BBC presenter Freddie Grisewood was a cousin.

Later life and death He lived alone for his last decades in Eye, Suffolk, the last surviving member of the group of Roman Catholic intellectuals and artists that included David Jones, Tom Burns and Rene Hague, Eric Gill's son in law. The concept of dumbing down always appalled him and he wrote a very caustic and persuasive paper De proclivitate ad levitatem (of a propensity towards shallowness) during the later part of his life. Grisewood was a worldly ascetic whose changeling quality can be seen in David Jones's portrait in National Museum Wales.

He died on 8 January 1997.

Works Broadcasting and Society: Comments from a Christian Standpoint (1949) David Jones, Epoch and Artist: Selected Writings (1959) editor The Recess (1963) novel The Last Cab on the Rank (1964) novel David Jones: Writer and Artist (1965) One Thing at a Time (1968) autobiography The Painted Kipper: A Study of the Spurious in the Contemporary Scene (1970) David Jones, The Dying Gaul and Other Writings (1978) novel David Jones, The Roman Quarry and Other Sequences (1981) editor with René Hague Strategem (1987) novel