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Roly Drower
Roland Paul Drower, FRAS (12 October 1953 – 12 May 2008), known as Roly, was an English software engineer, journalist, satirist, activist, poet, broadcaster and composer. He is best remembered for his contributions to the political and artistic life of his adopted home, the Isle of Man, and for his protracted legal conflict with Albert Gubay, the multi-millionaire founder of the Kwik Save supermarket chain.
Drower came from an accomplished family. His great-grandparents, Joseph and Elizabeth Cunningham, set up Britain's first holiday camp. His grandfather, Sir Edwin Mortimer Drower, was a British diplomat who served as a judicial adviser to the government of Iraq. His grandmother, Lady Ethel Stefana Drower, was an oriental anthropologist who wrote romantic novels for Mills and Boon under her maiden name of E. S. Stevens. His uncle, Captain William Mortimer Drower, worked as a translator in Japanese prison camps during the Second World War, and later served in the British Embassy in Washington. His aunt, Professor Margaret Drower, was an Egyptologist at University College London and the biographer of Flinders Petrie. His father, Denys Drower, was a BBC announcer who was heard as 'London Calling' during the Second World War and also appeared on the Goon Show; in retirement he became a writer of fiction, local history and atheist doggerel. Drower's mother, Angela Drower, was a watercolour painter. His sister, Jill Drower, formerly a dancer in a countercultural 1960s commune, is a social historian.
Born on 12 October 1953, Drower grew up in an affluent middle-class household in Putney, a suburb of southwest London. He attended a small local preparatory school until the age of thirteen, when he was sent to board at Stowe, an independent school based in Stowe House, a grand neoclassical mansion that had once been the country home of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos. His time in Stowe's Grafton House, enlivened by a sword fight and an extracurricular experiment with nitroglycerine, was cut short when he was expelled in 1972.
After working in railway track maintenance and then a biscuit factory while studying science and mathematics in evening classes, Drower enrolled in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London in 1976. Together with his friend David C. Jewitt, later a Kavli and Shaw laureate and the joint discoverer of the Kuiper Belt, he graduated with a first class honours degree in astronomy in 1979. He remained at UCL to undertake a Ph.D. in solar physics at the College's Mullard Space Science Laboratory under the supervision of Dr John Parkinson, but he abandoned his researches before completing his thesis.
A retired diplomat, a friend of Drower's uncle William, hired Drower to help plan a science museum for Saudi Arabia, but the project never came to fruition. Prompted in part by a random assault on his own doorstep that almost killed him, Drower decided to relocate from his council flat in a Brentford tower block to a cottage in Kirk Andreas on the Isle of Man, near where his parents were living in retirement.
Drower had learned how to code in Fortran as an undergraduate, and had deepened his knowledge of computing by teaching himself how to use an early Apple PC. On the Isle of Man he got a job as a computer technician working for Manx Independent Carriers. He also wrote the original operating software for the Isle of Man Hyperbaric Chamber (a decompression facility for deep sea divers).
In London, Drower had written comic autobiographical sketches for a motorcycling magazine and an unpublished fantasy novel. On the Isle of Man, his involvement in the arts deepened. He wrote humorous memoirs, short stories and poems exploring the gamut of his many interests, including theology, mythology, philosophy, mathematics, physics, astronomy, ecology and current Manx affairs. He broadcast his poems on Manx radio and travelled around the island performing them in pubs and village halls, and he edited the magazine of the Isle of Man Poetry Society.
As a musician, he composed electronic scores that sometimes incorporated elements drawn from Manx folk traditions. He issued his work both on CD and online under the pseudonym of the Sulby Phantom Band.
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Roly Drower
Roland Paul Drower, FRAS (12 October 1953 – 12 May 2008), known as Roly, was an English software engineer, journalist, satirist, activist, poet, broadcaster and composer. He is best remembered for his contributions to the political and artistic life of his adopted home, the Isle of Man, and for his protracted legal conflict with Albert Gubay, the multi-millionaire founder of the Kwik Save supermarket chain.
Drower came from an accomplished family. His great-grandparents, Joseph and Elizabeth Cunningham, set up Britain's first holiday camp. His grandfather, Sir Edwin Mortimer Drower, was a British diplomat who served as a judicial adviser to the government of Iraq. His grandmother, Lady Ethel Stefana Drower, was an oriental anthropologist who wrote romantic novels for Mills and Boon under her maiden name of E. S. Stevens. His uncle, Captain William Mortimer Drower, worked as a translator in Japanese prison camps during the Second World War, and later served in the British Embassy in Washington. His aunt, Professor Margaret Drower, was an Egyptologist at University College London and the biographer of Flinders Petrie. His father, Denys Drower, was a BBC announcer who was heard as 'London Calling' during the Second World War and also appeared on the Goon Show; in retirement he became a writer of fiction, local history and atheist doggerel. Drower's mother, Angela Drower, was a watercolour painter. His sister, Jill Drower, formerly a dancer in a countercultural 1960s commune, is a social historian.
Born on 12 October 1953, Drower grew up in an affluent middle-class household in Putney, a suburb of southwest London. He attended a small local preparatory school until the age of thirteen, when he was sent to board at Stowe, an independent school based in Stowe House, a grand neoclassical mansion that had once been the country home of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos. His time in Stowe's Grafton House, enlivened by a sword fight and an extracurricular experiment with nitroglycerine, was cut short when he was expelled in 1972.
After working in railway track maintenance and then a biscuit factory while studying science and mathematics in evening classes, Drower enrolled in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London in 1976. Together with his friend David C. Jewitt, later a Kavli and Shaw laureate and the joint discoverer of the Kuiper Belt, he graduated with a first class honours degree in astronomy in 1979. He remained at UCL to undertake a Ph.D. in solar physics at the College's Mullard Space Science Laboratory under the supervision of Dr John Parkinson, but he abandoned his researches before completing his thesis.
A retired diplomat, a friend of Drower's uncle William, hired Drower to help plan a science museum for Saudi Arabia, but the project never came to fruition. Prompted in part by a random assault on his own doorstep that almost killed him, Drower decided to relocate from his council flat in a Brentford tower block to a cottage in Kirk Andreas on the Isle of Man, near where his parents were living in retirement.
Drower had learned how to code in Fortran as an undergraduate, and had deepened his knowledge of computing by teaching himself how to use an early Apple PC. On the Isle of Man he got a job as a computer technician working for Manx Independent Carriers. He also wrote the original operating software for the Isle of Man Hyperbaric Chamber (a decompression facility for deep sea divers).
In London, Drower had written comic autobiographical sketches for a motorcycling magazine and an unpublished fantasy novel. On the Isle of Man, his involvement in the arts deepened. He wrote humorous memoirs, short stories and poems exploring the gamut of his many interests, including theology, mythology, philosophy, mathematics, physics, astronomy, ecology and current Manx affairs. He broadcast his poems on Manx radio and travelled around the island performing them in pubs and village halls, and he edited the magazine of the Isle of Man Poetry Society.
As a musician, he composed electronic scores that sometimes incorporated elements drawn from Manx folk traditions. He issued his work both on CD and online under the pseudonym of the Sulby Phantom Band.