Peter Howard | |
|---|---|
| Born | Peter Dunsmore Howard (1908-12-20)20 December 1908 Maidenhead,Berkshire, England |
| Died | 25 February 1965(1965-02-25) (aged 56) Lima, Peru |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Peter Dunsmore Howard (20 December 1908 – 25 February 1965)[1] was a Britishjournalist,playwright, captain of theEngland national rugby union team and leader ofMoral Re-Armament from 1961 to 1965. He also won a World Championship bobsleigh medal in 1939.
Born inMaidenhead,England, Howard was educated atMill Hill School.[2] A graduate of theUniversity of Oxford and journalist, Howard captained theEngland national rugby union team while he worked withOswald Mosley for theNew Party. Howard representedOxford University RFC inThe Varsity Match in 1929 and 1930 and made his England debut against Wales in January 1930 while he was still at Oxford. He played eight times for England and in all four matches in theFive Nations Championship in both 1930 and 1931. He captained England against Ireland at Twickenham in 1931, Ireland winning 6–5.[3] In 1939, he won thesilver medal in the four-man event at theFIBT World Championships inSt. Moritz.
After a flirtation with Mosley'sBlackshirts, Howard joined theConservative Party and became a political correspondent and investigative reporter forLord Beaverbrook'sDaily Express. In 1940, with theLabour Party's future leaderMichael Foot and theLiberal Party'sFrank Owen, Howard wrote the political polemic,Guilty Men, against Britain'sappeasement and the politicians responsible for it.
Meanwhile, Howard had been assigned by Lord Beaverbrook to investigate the 1930s English evangelical movement of the American religious leaderFrank Buchman, theOxford Group, which was later renamedMoral Re-Armament. Howard interviewed Buchman and eventually left theDaily Express and joined the inner circle of Moral Re-Armament.[4][5] In 1941, he published the bookInnocent Men in which he took a different view of the politicians lambasted inGuilty Men only a year earlier. He still sharply questioned the relationship between press and government in wartime Britain but also expressed his views about the role that Moral Re-Armament could play.[6]
Moral Re-Armament made the fight againstcommunism a high priority during and afterWorld War II and considered it a threat to peace andreligious freedom. Howard wrote 17 plays, which were mostly perceived as both extremely didactic andanticommunist on the themes of co-operation and dialogue in industrial relations, politics, and personal life.[citation needed]
After Buchman died in 1961, Howard was his chosen successor as leader of the worldwide Moral Re-Armament movement. Howard travelled extensively until he died of viral pneumonia inLima, Peru, in February 1965.
Howard married 1932Wimbledon ladies doubles championDoris Metaxa, and they had three children: Anne Marie, Anthony John andThe Times journalistPhilip Howard. Doë (Doris) Metaxa Howard was born inGreece on 12 June 1911, but she was raised inMarseille and representedFrance at Wimbledon; she died on 7 September 2007, aged 96.
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