Phil’s Generation:
Three sons of Fred Archer, MD of Archer Cowley & Co, and his musical wife Gwen. Michael born 1938, Philip born 1941 and Edward born 1949. Pre-war, mid-war and post-war. All born in Oxford. All educated at the same two Oxford schools: Christ Church Cathedral Choir School and Magdalen College School. All grew up in Headington in a musical home with unlimited access to their LRAM-qualified piano-teacher mother, and musical opportunities at school. And all three were given the opportunity (that their parents lacked entirely) of University education. Michael went directly to Oxford (St Edmund Hall, reading history) and Philip to Manchester (UMIST reading chemistry), while Edward preferred to do a ‘gap’ year of Voluntary Service Overseas in Uganda when he left MCS. And then their lives diverged significantly. Michael’s career took him via newspaper journalism in Cumbria and Oxford into television sport with London Weekend TV and Trans-World International. Phil’s career started with a preliminary one-year sortie into school-teaching via a Dip-Ed in Oxford (St Edmund Hall), a tactical withdrawal from such, and a re-start in patent law with Dunlop in Birmingham, and onward moves to Massey-Ferguson in Coventry, Hestair in Peterborough, and Urquhart-Dykes & Lord, likewise in Peterborough. Edward’s VSO year seems to have been life-changing for him. He was in Uganda at the time of Idi Amin’s regime, and followed Jon Snow at Kamuli College, Uganda. His subsequent career has been very much home-based in Oxford. He has qualifications in piano-technology, information technology (Microsoft), and in teaching English as a foreign language. But perhaps the most demanding assignment of his life was in caring for Gwen at home in Ambleside Drive Headington, in her latter days before she died in 2009 at the age of 100 and four months. Edward’s particular current and practical interests include Theosophy in which he teaches regularly at The Theosophical Society’s HQ in Baker Street, London and as a diarist having many volumes to his credit. In terms of politics, the three brothers differ likewise significantly, from Phil the Guardian reading paid-up Lib-Dem, and Green Party sympathiser, to Michael whose preference I read as more towards the Telegraph/Times/Mail camp, while Edward wisely abjures all such classification, preferring to lead by example in a simple life with a very low carbon-footprint. In music, none of Gwen’s sons has risen to the heights she scaled in terms of the classical piano repertoire, where she was judged an equal of Christopher Headington in piano duets with him. Michael’s violin-playing has been a life-long love for him, which has continued in the Wimbledon Symphony Orchestra until very recently. Phil’s piano-playing is entirely for his own enjoyment, being generally in the ‘pub-sing-song’ style, with a corresponding repertoire, lovingly hammered out on Gwen’s very own Brinsmead piano rescued many years ago from oblivion in a pub to which her brother Vincent had consigned it. And as to religion, well, Edward is the clearest: he’s a Theosophist. Phil was a Methodist, then a Unitarian, and Michael married into a reformed-Jewish family. Well, well.(6.5.2014).