Early life and education
Harman Grisewood was born at Wormleybury Manor in Hertfordshire to Lieutenant Colonel Harman Joseph Mary Grisewood and Lucille Genevieve Cardozo. His mother was the youngest daughter (3 August 1881) of Henry O'Connell Cardozo, C.I.E. and had been brought up in India. His father was born on 20 Oct 1879 at Gatwick House, Billericay, Essex, educated at Beaumont, Downside School, and Christ Church, Oxford; and served in the Royal Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, the Fourth Hussars and 11th Bn Royal Sussex Regiment. He served as Aide-de-camp to George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston in South Africa in the Boer war. In 1909 he became Privy Chamberlain of Sword and Cape to Pope Pius X, a position of honour which is now known as a Gentleman of His Holiness. He was a handsome, unreliable, sociable wanderer who Harman described as 'one of Baudelaire's true travellers'.
Harman had two younger brothers, Peter Henry (15 June 1907 – 1973) and Gabriel Thomas (23 March 1910 – 17 February 1986) who was known as Tucks. His younger sister Mary Magdalen Lucy Teresa (11 December 1911 – 1950) was known as Missie. When he was young the family moved to the Prebendal in Thame, Oxfordshire, a rambling 13th century house, much of it in ruins, which had its own chapel and resident Catholic priest – Father Randolph Traill. In his autobiography, One Thing at a Time (1968), he described an outing with his brother, nanny, nursemaid and pram, when they were stoned by villagers as they approached the Anglican church. The nursery was the centre of the children's world, whilst adults and children were 'on equal terms' in the chapel. A devout Roman Catholic, he bemoaned the demise of the Tridentine Latin Mass in 1970 but remained loyal to the Church, as he explained in Why Am I Still a Catholic, published in 1980.
His grandmother Concetta Messina lived mainly at the Villa Marguerite at Grasse, France, where she ran an eccentric household. After his Oxford days he spent time at Grasse; in Cyprus where his family had property; and with an uncle in Malta.
In 1916, aged 10, he was sent to Ampleforth College, along with his younger brothers. The classroom became his refuge and he befriended Father Bernard McElligot who was a key figure in both the monastery and school for over 25 years, and who remained a friend until his death in 1990.
He won a history scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford and became a leading member of Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), where he befriended Robert Speaight, Sir Gyles Isham, 12th Baronet, Peter Fleming, Rupert Hart-Davis, Baron John Redcliffe-Maud and Christopher Sykes. In his last year he shared rooms with Sir Denys Buckley who became a High Court judge, and to whom Grisewood said he owed a love of English ways. Theodore Komisarjevsky cast him as King Lear in his OUDS production.
He left Oxford with little sense of direction and took a job writing labels at Fortnum and Mason in London where he earned £3 per week. Very much part of the Brideshead generation, he spent many of his evenings at Lord Kinross's parties at Yeomans Row, Knightsbridge.
