George Thornycroft Sassoon (30 October 1936 – 8 March 2006) was a British scientist, electronic engineer,

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

, translator and author.

Early life

Sassoon was the only child of the poet

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...

and Hester Sassoon (née Gatty), and was born in London, where his parents had rented a house to be closer to specialist help than at their home in

Heytesbury Heytesbury is a village (formerly considered to be a town) and a civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The village lies on the north bank of the Wylye, about southeast of the town of Warminster. The civil parish includes most of the small neig ...

, Wiltshire. He was christened at

St Martin-in-the-Fields St Martin-in-the-Fields is a Church of England parish church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. It is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. There has been a church on the site since at least the mediev ...

by Rev Dick Sheppard. George's father wrote playfully to

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, Parody, parodist and Caricature, caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic ...

in November 1936: "Will he, I wonder, become Prime Minister, Poet Laureate, Archbishop of Canterbury, or merely Editor of ''The Times Literary Supplement''? Or Master of The Quorn? Or merely Squire of Heytesbury?" In 1947, Sassoon's parents separated, and he thereafter spent much of his childhood with his mother on the Scottish island of Mull. He was educated at Greenways Preparatory School at Ashton Gifford House, near

Codford Codford is a civil parish south of Salisbury Plain in the Wylye Valley in Wiltshire, England. Its settlements are the adjacent villages of Codford St Peter and Codford St Mary, which lie some southeast of Warminster. The two villages are on th ...

in Wiltshire, then at

Oundle School Oundle School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) for pupils 11–18 situated in the market town of Oundle in Northamptonshire, England. The school has been governed by the Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City ...

and

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

Career

Sassoon investigated extraterrestrial phenomena and helped his mother to run a sheep farm on Mull. Between 1978 and 1980, he published three books, two of which were about his theories on extraterrestrial visitations, and also spoke at conferences on alien phenomena.

Personal life

After his father died in 1967, Sassoon inherited and occupied his father's large country house, Heytesbury House at

, Wiltshire. He found it much neglected and worked to restore it, and also battled unsuccessfully to stop a planned A36 bypass from going through the park of the house; in the process, he sold many of his father's papers to raise additional funds. The southern part of the park was subject to a

compulsory purchase order A compulsory purchase order (CPO; , ) is a legal function in the United Kingdom and Ireland that allows certain bodies to obtain land or property without the consent of the owner. It may be enforced if a proposed development is considered one for p ...

in 1985 to allow construction of the bypass, separating the house from its cricket field and requiring a new entrance to be made from the west. He sold the house in 1996 after a serious fire and moved to a smaller property in the nearby village of

Sutton Veny Sutton Veny is a village and civil parish in the Wylye valley, to the southeast of the town of Warminster in Wiltshire, England; the village is about from Warminster town centre. 'Sutton' means 'south farmstead' in relation to Norton Bavant, ...

, but spent part of the year on Mull, where he had inherited his mother's property Ben Buie on her death in 1973. Sassoon married four times: Stephanie Munro, at Inverness in 1955 (dissolved 1961); Marguerite Dicks in 1961 (dissolved 1974); Susan Christian-Howard in 1975 (dissolved 1982); and lastly, Alison Pulvertaft in 1994. George's daughter by his first marriage, Kendall Sassoon, was born shortly after her parents separated. She is the Patron-in-Chief of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship. George's daughter and son by his third marriage, Isobel (born 1976) and Thomas (born 1978), were both killed in a road accident in Mendip, Somerset, in 1996. Sassoon was something of a '' bon-viveur'', well-known among other things for his playing of the piano-accordion. Among his other interests were

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

, the

Antipodes In geography, the antipode () of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diametrically opposite to it. A pair of points ''antipodal'' () to each other are situated such that a straight line connecting the two would pass through ...

, and

amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency commu ...

, where his call-sign was GM3JZK.

Death

Sassoon died aged 69 of cancer in Wiltshire in 2006. His body was buried in the Balure Cemetery on the

Isle of Mull The Isle of Mull ( gd, An t-Eilean Muileach ) or just Mull (; gd, Muile, links=no ) is the second-largest island of the Inner Hebrides (after Skye) and lies off the west coast of Scotland in the council area of Argyll and Bute. Covering ...

in Scotland's

Inner Hebrides The Inner Hebrides (; Scottish Gaelic: ''Na h-Eileanan a-staigh'', "the inner isles") is an archipelago off the west coast of mainland Scotland, to the south east of the Outer Hebrides. Together these two island chains form the Hebrides, whi ...

. His headstone carries the inscription ‘Polymath, GM3JZK’.

Books by George Sassoon

*'' The Manna-Machine'' (1978) *''The Kabbalah Decoded'' (1978) *'' The Radio Hacker's Codebook'', Duckworth, London. (1986)

References

External links

Obituary
at ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

''
Obituary
at ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Sassoon, George 1936 births 2006 deaths Alumni of King's College, Cambridge European amateur radio operators Deaths from cancer in England English Jews Scottish Jews People educated at Greenways School People educated at Oundle School George English people of Indian-Jewish descent British writers of Indian descent Baghdadi Jews