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Thomas Mervyn Horder, 2nd Baron Horder was an English hereditary peer, publisher, and a composer of songs.

Life

Horder was born in London on 8 December 1910. He was the youngest child and only son of Thomas Jeeves Horder, 1st Baron Horder of Ashford, always known as ‘Tommy’, who was created the first Baron Horder of Ashford thanks to his service as physician to several British monarchs and Prime Ministers. Horder became the second Baron on the death of his father in 1955, inheriting the house and gardens at Ashford Chace, near Steep. After studies at Winchester College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read classics, in the early 1930s Mervyn Horder attended the Guildhall School of Music, studying principally composition; he had also become a competent pianist. Horder opted not to make music his profession, becoming instead a publisher, and by 1938 was on the board of the small publishing firm of Duckworth.^[1]

Before the Second World War, Horder had acquired some flying experience, learning to fly the newly-invented autogyro, a combination of light aircraft and helicopter. He was accepted into the RAF Reserve, and saw service forecasting the flight paths of German bombers, then working in Intelligence in India, Ceylon (as it then was) and finally Japan. He attained the rank of Wing Commander.

Soon after the war he returned to publishing and eventually became Managing Director of Duckworth's. He was also married, to a singer, Mary Ross McDougall, but the marriage did not last and ended in divorce. He did not marry again. He sold Ashford Chace in 1958 but retained an interest, having first of all commissioned the building, in the large grounds, of a small modernist studio house designed by his architect nephew Edward Cullinan, where he could devote himself to playing and composing. During the working week he lived in a mews house in St John's Wood, near Lord’s Cricket Ground, taking little care of himself and becoming slightly eccentric. He sold his controlling interest in Duckworth’s in 1968.

Music then took over as the main interest in his life. He composed mainly songs, both serious and comic, setting words from authors as diverse as Shakespeare and A. E. Housman, John Betjeman and Dorothy Parker. He wrote a ballet, The Unicorn in the Garden, as well as many carols and hymn-tunes and music for solo piano and piano duet.

Horder died on 3 July 1997 aged 86. His will directed that his ashes "be scattered from the top of The Tower Windmill, Burnham Overy Staithe in Norfolk, in a high wind" which was fulfilled by his relatives which was done on 7 July 1997.

Writings

Books

Anthologies

Articles and reviews

in The Bookseller, London Magazine, Blackwood's Magazine, Cornhill Magazine, The Spectator, Private Eye, etc.

Prefaces and introductions

to editions of John Dundas Cochrane, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., [https://archive.org/details/masterjohanndiet00diet Johann Dietz], Maupassant, Dame Edith Sitwell, Anthony Trollope

Music

These include settings, sometimes grouped in cycles, of Auden, Barnes, Betjeman, Belloc, Bridges, Burns, Charles Causley, Chesterton, Walter de la Mare, Eleanor Farjeon, Robert Herrick, A. P. Herbert, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Dorothy Parker, Shakespeare, Tennyson, W. B. Yeats

Unicorn in the Garden, ballet, first performed by Harlequin Ballet Company, LAMDA Theatre, Earl's Court, London, 7 November 1964

References

1. ^Woolf at the Door, by J. Jolliffe, pub. Duckworth & Co., 1993
2. ^Monday 7 July, with incorrect date of death
3. ^[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-lord-horder-1249901.html Thursday 10 July 1997]

Sources

Obituaries in The Times,^[2] Daily Telegraph (8 July 1997), The Independent,^[3] Who Was Who

5 : British publishers (people)|1910 births|1997 deaths|20th-century classical musicians|20th-century British composers