Dermot Michael Macgregor Morrah (26 April 1896 – 30 November 1974) was a British journalist for ''
The Times'' and an expert on the
British royal family.
Education
Morrah went to the
University of Oxford, where he studied mathematics for a year just before the outbreak of the
First World War before enlisting in the British Army and fighting in France. There, he was wounded and returned to Oxford, changed his studies to modern history and gained a
first-class degree
The British undergraduate degree classification system is a grading structure for undergraduate degrees or bachelor's degrees and integrated master's degrees in the United Kingdom. The system has been applied (sometimes with significant variati ...
. He became a Prize Fellow of
All Souls College, and shared rooms with
T. E. Lawrence. After dating his future wife under the eye of a nun who acted as a
chaperone, his marriage forced him to end his Prize Fellowship, as they were required to be single.
Career
Morrah was in the
Civil Service
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
for six years before joining the editorial staff of the ''
Daily Mail
The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...
'' in 1928.
A few years later, he joined the editorial staff of ''
The Times'', where he worked for 30 years.
During this time, he wrote books on Britain's monarchy and
its constitution,
and later began writing speeches for
George VI during the
Second World War.
His books have included the ''History of the Times'',
''The Royal Family: The Illustrated Story of the Royal Family's Service to Britain and the Commonwealth'',
''The Work of the Queen''
and ''To Be a King'', the last being about the early life of
Charles, Prince of Wales.
He was an expert on
heraldry
Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...
and
genealogy and a good court historian.
His unpaid post of
Arundel Herald Extraordinary was given to him on 27 April 1953.
He had a friendly relationship with
Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon (4 August 1900 – 30 March 2002) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 to 6 February 1952 as the wife of King George VI. She was the l ...
.
In 1947, while
Elizabeth II was still a princess, Morrah wrote a famous speech of hers given on her 21st birthday in southern Africa, which had been briefly lost in a bar.
He was later an aide at the
coronation of Elizabeth II.
He was a member of the
College of Arms.
Death
He died on 30 November 1974, aged 78.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morrah, Dermot
1896 births
1974 deaths
Alumni of the University of Oxford
Alumni of All Souls College, Oxford
20th-century British journalists
British Army personnel of World War I