Concordia

Concordia Winter 2023

Michael Denis Glover (1972-1977) My great friend, Mike, died peacefully at home on 21st June 2023 following a long and brave battle with Motor Neurone Disease. Mike was born on 29th March 1959 and was at Gayhurst School before starting at Merchant Taylors’ in 1972, where both his father, Denis, and his uncle, Alan, had been pupils in the 1940s. Mike was a proud OMT and over the years loved returning to the school for OMT Day, attending the Triennial Service and the Society Dinner. After school, he studied Accountancy at the University of Kent and passed a couple of summers working on the beach in the South of France as a windsurfing instructor. Following graduation, he spent 40 years in senior financial roles in real-estate management and development. Mike loved his rugby and after university he joined Beaconsfield Rugby Club, where he was to become the co-founder of their this most social, if not the most skilful, of teams. He was also a passionate Bath Rugby supporter and regular at The Rec for many years, travelling down from Buckinghamshire, then later up from Hampshire and for the last seven or eight years from his home in Horningsham, Wiltshire where he and his wife, Liz, had found the home of their dreams on the Longleat Estate. roguish and irreverent sense of humour, always imparted with a twinkle in his eye; but above all he will be remembered as loved by everybody. Colin Wigginton (1973–1977) There are, of course, many memories, not least Mike’s Bandits XV, enthusiastically captaining and taking on all the challenges of organising

Richard Mitzmann (1958-1963) died on 1st September 2020 Michael Easun (1944-1947) died on 2nd December 2022 Douglas Baker (1943-1949) died on 21st December 2022 John Stott (1946-1951) died on 1st January 2023 John Greenwood (1939-1945) died on 22nd February 2023 Neil Young (1951-1956) died on 27th February 2023 Michael Whitehead (1950-1955) died in March 2023 Peter Glover (1957-1960) died in March 2023 R Tindall (1971-1976) died on 17th March 2023 Robert Waters (1957-1962) died on 25th March 2023 Peter Holloway (1959-1964) died on 1st May 2023 Tony Shipley (1950-1955) died on 9th May 2023 Raymond Harrison (1953-1957) died on 19th May 2023 Michael Glover (1972-1977) died in June 2023 Robin Schneider (1972-1978) died on 22nd May 2023 Anthony Joyce (1943-1948) died on 21st July 2023 Ian Turnbull (1949-1954) died on 28th July 2023 Donald Patton (1958-1962) died in August 2023 Christopher Coker (1966-1972) died on 5th September 2023 Andrew Pearce (1949-1953) died on 20th September 2023 Peter Ashford (1939-1945) died on 9th October 2023 Antony Walker (1948-1952) died on 13th October 2023 David Eaton (1957-1961) died on 1st November 2023 Roger Chapman (1958-1963) died on 11th November 2023

maintained, are bound to collide with the institutions of the liberal world order. Coker was a regular participant in UK and Nato military education and strategic planning circles. He served as Director of the Rațiu Forum in Romania, was a Nato fellow in 1981, served two terms on the Council of the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) and was credited by a contributor to his memorial page with saving it when it faced huge peril. As well as advising and contributing to the IEDSS, he worked with the Centre for Policy Studies and lectured at defence colleges and institutes around the world. Kind, modest and generous, with a cynical but playful wit, Coker was an old-school academic, somewhat averse to modern technology, but devoted to his students, who loved him, and to teaching. A genuine polymath who was as happy discussing physics as philosophy, he had an extraordinary ability to deliver compelling speeches from a few scribbled notes and was capable of drafting Tinkerbell and Britney Spears into lectures to explain the intricacies of war. Coker always remained his own man and he relished the scope he had in his final post as co-director of LSE Ideas, where he showed an entrepreneurial streak, fundraising very successfully, and working alongside colleagues from different countries and disciplines to make connections between academic life and the policy world. He had quirky and colourful tastes in music, relishing the lush harmonies he found in the operas of Strauss and Korngold. In his office at the LSE he had what one visitor described as a “small museum of global-political-kitsch”, consisting of figurines of world dictators and a few smaller fry. Though he could be awkward in social settings, and needed a drink or two to feel at ease, he enjoyed good company and food, intellectual debate and cigars, and his conversations, at the Travellers’ Club or at a favourite watering hole on Aldwych, “often left you looking at the world in a new way”, as one admirer put it. Christopher Coker, who was unmarried, once told a colleague that he considered his students to be his children. This obituary was published in The Daily Telegraph , 16th November 2023

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Obituaries

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