Alan Grieve obituary: last of the Victorian entrepreneur philanthropists

Times

30-06-2025

In the late 1950s Alan Grieve was a bright young lawyer making his name in company and tax law at the legal firm Taylor & Humbert. Among its clients was John Jerwood, an enigmatic British millionaire living in Tokyo who had made his fortune in the postwar years through one of the world's largest cultured-pearl dealerships.
Senior partners regarded Jerwood as 'a little difficult' and were delighted to palm him off to Grieve. He began travelling the world with his client, who was soon also his friend and confidant. The pair bonded over the arts and in 1977 Jerwood, advised by Grieve, started the Jerwood Foundation as a personal vehicle for supporting music and educational projects. 'He had no children but he had money and liked education and the arts,' Grieve told The Independent, adding on another occasion: 'He wanted to give people that next step up.'
When Jerwood died in 1991, Grieve took over the foundation and since then has invested £110 million in theatres, dance studios, art galleries, prizes, exhibitions and more. Autocratic, single-minded and fun to be around, he was described as the last of the Victorian 'entrepreneur philanthropists'. At first he found the role challenging. There were large assets but little sense of order. Even establishing the extent of them took two years. 'There was no structure. At first it operated out of my office in Fleet Street,' he told The Times.
He bought property, notably a handsome Fitzroy Square townhouse that served as a headquarters until 2021, and shrewdly invested the remaining capital. Gradually he had acquired what one profile described as 'a Micawber-like reputation' for good financial management and an aversion to paying over the odds. 'It isn't my money, after all,' he insisted.
Some early philanthropic forays were quickly cast aside, including those into medicine and social welfare, and a venture supporting film production was shelved after precipitating a deluge of paperwork. A £3 million grant to plug a hole in the Royal Court's 1999 redevelopment budget led to claims that Buckingham Palace had vetoed a plan to rename it the 'Jerwood Royal Court', though compromise was reached after 'a robust debate' with the Royal Court retaining its identity and its two auditoria bearing the Jerwood name.
Less controversial were grants of £900,000 for the Jerwood Gallery at the Natural History Museum, £1.4 million for the Jerwood Library at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Grieve's alma mater, and £1 million for the Jerwood Hall at the London Symphony Orchestra's centre in the long-derelict Hawksmoor church of St Luke's in the City. 'I think we have found where we can make tangible, important and lasting contributions,' Grieve said. Equally important was a reputation for professionalism and for encouraging and rewarding excellence.
The Jerwood Painting Prize, established in 1994, gradually overtook the Turner as the prize painters most wanted to win before being phased out a decade later. Works by its winners, including Craigie Aitchison, Maggi Hambling and Prunella Clough, formed part of the ever-growing Jerwood Collection. There have also been Jerwood prizes for film-writing, choreography, composition and craftsmanship.
Some of the collection found a home at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, which opened in 2012. Grieve not only oversaw its construction, designed by his architect son Tom, but personally assembled its collection with advice from his curator daughter Lara, later referring with no embarrassment to his policy of 'enlightened nepotism'. Seven years later the gallery and its funders went their separate ways.
Another home for the collection was the Jerwood Space, a converted Victorian school in Southwark, south London, that combines an art gallery with low-cost dance and theatre rehearsal studios. The foundation received a National Lottery grant towards the development, but handed it back when Grieve noticed that it came with strings attached. 'I realised that the Arts Council would want to bear in on me, tell me I hadn't done this or that. So I rang up Gerry Robinson [then chairman of Arts Council England] and asked to whom I should make the cheque out. I think you'd say he was taken aback,' he said.
Grieve claimed to have never paid more than £100,000 for a painting, yet he successfully assembled a vast canon of predominantly British art that included works by Walter Sickert, Augustus John, Stanley Spencer, Winifred Nicholson and LS Lowry. 'It's still organic, we'll continue to buy, but sometimes we fail at auction because we're not prepared to pay prices we cannot afford,' he said, explaining that on one occasion he missed out on a piece by Tristram Hillier when the bidding broke the foundation's ceiling.
Another focus was on the stage, including a £1.2 million grant towards the 215-seat Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. For Grieve this was a logical continuation of cradle-to-grave, or at least school-to-success, support for theatre professionals. 'It fitted very well,' he said. 'We now have the Jerwood Space, we have the Royal Court where we're supporting young playwrights, we have the capital grant to establish the theatres there, and we're supporting young theatre directors.'
Under Grieve's auspices the Jerwood Foundation operated as a lean organisation, run by only a handful of staff and trustees. It was also something of a personal fiefdom. On one occasion he committed £500,000 to a motorised training vessel for the Sea Cadets after his wife read in The Times that the MoD was refusing to finance its construction. For him, such flexibility was crucial. 'It's one of the characteristics that makes us different from others,' he said.
So too was being able to react quickly to events. During the Covid-19 pandemic he reduced operating costs by selling Jerwood's headquarters and decamping to a converted farm building in the rolling hills of Shropshire, where he had lived for more than three decades. He also established a £1 million Blue Sky Fund, shared between the Theatre Artists Fund and Help Musicians, to support freelance artists whose livelihoods were jeopardised by the closure of theatres and performance spaces. 'Not just the violinist, but the bloke that fixes the lighting, the stagehands, carpenters and wig-makers,' he told the Financial Times.
Surveying his first 30 years running the Jerwood Foundation, Grieve insisted that it was his duty to give back to society on as wide a basis as possible. 'It might sound amorphous, but you have to try. Your mission must have a purpose,' he said. 'Philanthropy is not about making money and giving it away to say that you are the 'big guy'. The foundation has come to pride itself on its willingness to take risks. There is no formula. We're flexible, open-minded and, I'd like to think, not a soft touch.'
Alan Thomas Grieve was born in London in 1928, the only child of Lewis Grieve, who owned a jute sack factory, and his wife Doris (née Amner). His father wanted him to be a diplomat but a chaplain at Aldenham School, Hertfordshire, nudged him towards law, which he read at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he won a hockey blue. There he befriended a young American GI whose father repaid his kindness by laying on the trip of a lifetime around the US. Before completing his studies he undertook National Service with the 14th/20th King's Hussars; later he was a captain in the City of London Yeomanry (Territorial Army).
On graduating he joined Slaughter & May and in 1957 married Anne Dulake, who had studied medicine. He is survived by their daughter, Amanda, Lady Harlech, a creative stylist at Chanel, and two sons, Charles, who runs Brandcast Media, and Ivan, an artist. The marriage was dissolved and in 1971 he married Karen Dunn, whom he had met at a dinner party and who worked in antiques. She also survives him with their son, Tom, an architect, and daughter, Lara, who is a trustee and executive director of the Jerwood Foundation. 'I have instilled the work ethic first, then natural instinct. They have lived with art and seen it,' he said of his children.
Grieve moved to Taylor & Humbert in 1958 and a few years later advised the owners of Radio Caroline on their pirate radio operation. He was also the author of Purchase Tax (1958), which is as exciting as the title suggests, and in 1973 was involved in forming the Intellects Group, an international group of law firms. After being appointed senior partner in 1979 he oversaw the mergers that eventually led to his firm becoming Taylor Wessing.
By the time Jerwood died, Grieve had largely retired from legal work to concentrate on philanthropy. A combination of the foundation's previous resources, a fresh legacy from Jerwood and a run of healthy investment returns enabled him to increase the Jerwood profile in the 1990s, supporting more artists and organisations with larger sums. He continued to drive the foundation forward, remaining a trustee to the end of his life and only stepping down as chairman last year.
A trim figure whose hair turned white at an early age, enabling him to maintain an almost unchanged look of urbane assurance, Grieve was just as spry and sprightly in person as he was with the Jerwood Foundation. He swam regularly and skied until his knees complained too much. 'You've got to be nimble, got to be fleet-footed, got to be on top of your funding,' he told one journalist, telling another: 'Success is a mixture of luck, timing and expertise, and if you are able to bring these together, you will usually produce results.'
Alan Grieve CBE, lawyer, philanthropist and chairman of the Jerwood Foundation, was born on January 22, 1928. He died on May 14, 2025, aged 97