Introduction

My father, David Worswick,¹ was born on 18 August 1916 in Chiswick, London. His father, Thomas Worswick, was the son of a mining family in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, who worked his way to Liverpool University, earning a BSc and an MSc.

After distinguished war service, he became Director of Education at the London Regent Street Polytechnic where he devoted himself to the education and advancement of working-class students, a mission which David carried on. David's mother, Evelyn, nee Green, studied History and English at Manchester University. Thomas and Evelyn had three sons and a daughter; David was the second son.

I would like to thank my sister, Eleanor Stanier, for materials and memories about David and also my brother, Richard Worswick, for a treasure trove of materials. I am also very grateful to Geoffrey Harcourt, my former supervisor at Cambridge in 1965—1966, who proposed my name for this project and gave me some enlightening comments and thoughts on the first draft. Finally, my husband, Joseph Seneca, organised and edited the entire manuscript for which I give him hearty thanks.

¹ His given names were George David Norman and his professional signature was G.D.N. Worswick.

R. Seneca (*)

Cornelius, NC, USA

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As a boy, David attended the preparatory school, Colet Court (now St Paul's Juniors), and received a typical classical education of the time, including a large dose of Latin and Greek. He excelled in all his subjects, but was particularly gifted in mathematics. By the time he was twelve, he was promoted to the same class as his clever brother, Tom, who was two-and-a-half years older.

From Colet Court, David went on to attend St Paul's School, where also he excelled, until tragedy struck the family in the form of the sudden death of his father from meningitis in 1932.

David was just fifteen. The awful blow was compounded by the embezzlement of his father's inheritance by a trusted friend, leaving the family in straightened circumstances. David's time at St Paul's was cut short. Nonetheless, with his mother's encouragement, he made his way via an Open Scholarship in Mathematics to New College, Oxford.^[133] Subsequent scholarship funds made it possible for David to complete his degree in Mathematics with First Class Honours in 1937.

The early and sudden death of his father was one in a series of tragedies that David suffered in the following years. His younger brother, Dick, an RAF pilot in the Second World War, was lost over the North Sea in 1942. In 1948, David and his wife, Sylvia, lost their fourth child, Thomas Nigel, at birth. David had married Sylvia Walsh in 1940 and she became his lifelong support. They had three children, Eleanor Mary, Rosalind Sylvia and Richard David before Thomas.

Then in his early thirties, David began to go deaf and was diagnosed with otosclerosis, a disease of the middle ear. He had inherited the disease from his mother who was also deaf. This blow affected him throughout his life as he became deafer as he grew older. He was completely uncomplaining and open about it. In professional meetings, he would unclip the microphone of his hearing aid from his shirt pocket and place it on the table in the middle so he could hear comments from all sides. But it was a sore affliction, especially since he was a great lover of music and lost his capacity to hear it well in later life.

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Source: Cord Robert A. (ed.). The Palgrave Companion to Oxford Economics. Palgrave Macmillan,2021. — 819 p. 2021

Introduction

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