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Victor Collin Matthews, Baron Matthews (5 December 1919 – 5 December 1995) was Group Managing Director of Trafalgar House, one of the
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's largest contracting businesses as well as the
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of the '' Daily Express''.


Career

Born in Islington and educated at Highbury School, Victor Matthews initially worked as an office boy for a
tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
business.Victor Matthews at Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
/ref> During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
he served as an
able seaman An able seaman (AB) is a seaman and member of the deck department of a merchant ship with more than two years' experience at sea and considered "well acquainted with his duty". An AB may work as a watchstander, a day worker, or a combination o ...
in the
Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve The Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) is one of the two volunteer reserve forces of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. Together with the Royal Marines Reserve, they form the Maritime Reserve. The present RNR was formed by merging the original R ...
and saw action at Dunkirk. After the War he joined Trollope & Colls, a large
construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form Physical object, objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Pr ...
business, where he became a contracts manager. He then bought his own construction business, Bridge Walker, which he expanded significantly before selling it to Trafalgar House. He became Group Managing Director of Trafalgar House in 1968 and Deputy Chairman in 1973. In 1977 Trafalgar House acquired Beaverbrook Newspapers and in 1982, it was floated on the
London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...
as Fleet Holdings with Matthews as its chairman. Matthews renamed the business Express Newspapers after its lead publication, the '' Daily Express''. He had confrontations with the trade unions but eventually secured their support. In August 1980 Trafalgar House bought Firestone tyre factory, a unique example of
Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
, which was about to become a
listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
. Matthews personally ordered destruction of the main features of the facade over the bank holiday weekend, two days before the building was to be listed. He was created a Life Peer on 22 July 1980 taking the title Baron Matthews, of Southgate in the
London Borough of Enfield The London Borough of Enfield () is a London borough in North London. It borders the London boroughs of Barnet to the west, Haringey to the south, and Waltham Forest to the southeast. To the north are the districts of Hertsmere, Welwyn Hat ...
. In 1985 the business was acquired by
United Newspapers UBM plc was a British business-to-business (B2B) events organiser headquartered in London, England, before its acquisition by Informa in 2018. It had a long history as a multinational media company. Its main focus was on B2B events, but its pr ...
and Matthews retired to
Jersey Jersey ( , ; nrf, Jèrri, label= Jèrriais ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey (french: Bailliage de Jersey, links=no; Jèrriais: ), is an island country and self-governing Crown Dependency near the coast of north-west France. It is the l ...
. He died there in 1995.


Family

In 1942 he married Joyce Geraldine Pilbeam; the couple had one son.


Arms


References

1919 births 1995 deaths 20th-century British businesspeople Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II Royal Navy sailors {{UK-business-bio-1910s-stub