David Morphet

David Morphet is a poet and writer who has worked in the Diplomatic Service, the Department of Energy, and private industry.

Born on 24 January 1940, he grew up in a Pennine valley near Huddersfield. From grammar school he went on a History Scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge where he gained a Double First in English.

In 1961 he entered the Diplomatic Service, serving in the Middle East and Spain. In 1966-68, he was a private secretary to two Foreign Secretaries, Michael Stewart and George Brown, and accompanied the latter to the Special Session of the United Nations in New York, following the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.

Joining the newly-established Department of Energy in 1974, he became the UK Governor at both the International Energy Agency in Paris and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. During 1978 and 1979 he was Deputy Chairman of the Midlands Electricity Board, returning to the Department of Energy to head three Divisions in succession – Electricity, Energy Policy and Atomic Energy.

Moving to the private sector in 1989, he held senior positions in the power and construction companies BICC and Balfour Beatty and served on the Council of the CBI. From 1993-2001 he was a Director of Barking Power Ltd. Following the privatisation of British Rail in 1997, he was appointed Director General of an industry-wide body, the Railway Forum, a position from which he retired in 2001.

With a strong interest in the treatment of mental illness and in mental aftercare, in 1972 he became a Founder Member of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship (‘Rethink’) and was its Chairman from 1977-82.

He has published six volumes of verse and the biography of a Victorian journalist, together with articles on Victorian journalism. He has also edited a book on St John’s College, Cambridge. From 2005-2009 he was on the Board of Magma poetry magazine, and edited its Winter 2007/08 issue. His verse has appeared in a number of magazines.

He married Sarah Sedgwick in 1968. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Publications

Louis Jennings MP, Editor of the New York Times and Tory Democrat (2001)

Seventy-Seven Poems (2002)

The Angel and the Fox (2003)

Approaching Animals from A to Z (2004)

52 Ways of Looking (2005)

The Silence of Green (2007)

The Maze: a daydream in five cantos (2009)

External links

• Notion Books