NATIONAL LIFE STORIES CITY LIVES Sir Roger Gibbs Interviewed by Cathy Courtney C409/086

458 Pages·2014·1.97 MB·English

by  Elspeth Millar

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES

CITY LIVES

Sir Roger Gibbs

Interviewed by Cathy Courtney

C409/086
This interview and transcript is accessible via http://sounds.bl.uk.

© The British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British
Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document.

Oral History
The British Library
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THE NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION

NTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Title Page
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Ref. No.: C409/86 Playback No.: F3119-F3127;
F5223-F5226; F9681-F9683;
F12013-F12016
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Collection title: City Lives
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Interviewee’s surname: Gibbs Title: Sir

Interviewee’s forenames: Roger

th
Date of birth: 13 October 1934 Sex: Male
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Date(s) of recording:
21.01.1992; 04.11.1992; 03.02.1993; 20.04.1993; 15.11.1995; 19.04.2001; 11.10.2002

Location of interview: Interviewee’s home and British Library

Name of interviewer: Cathy Courtney

Type of recorder: Marantz

Total no. of tapes: 20 (interview incomplete) Type of tape:

Mono or stereo: Speed:

Noise reduction: Original or copy:
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Additional material:
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Copyright/Clearance: © British Library
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Interviewer’s comments: Re Tapes 17-20 (F12013-F12016). I had an arrangement to
go for two hours and in fact recorded for four hours. I ran out of tape at the end while
he was telling me a particularly interesting story about Lord Lucan. The only thing I
could do was carry on and use the tiny bits at the ends of Side B of Tapes 17 and 18
(F12013 and F12014); i.e. to knot the account together, the listener would have to hear
the end of Tape 20 side B (F10016B), followed by the end of Tape 17 side B (F12013B)
and the end of Tape 18 side B (F12014B). It was too good to miss. (Both sections
marked by an asterisk)
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Sir Roger Gibbs Page 1
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
Tape 1 [F3119] Side A (part 1)

Interview with Roger Gibbs at his home on January the 21st 1992.

.....office at the Wellcome Trust? [break in recording] .....begin at the beginning. Could you
tell me where and when you were born?

I was born on the 13th of October 1934, in Hertfordshire.

And were you the eldest child?

No, I was number four, the fourth son, which was a slight disappointment to the parents, and
the fourth of six.

And the other two were also boys?

They were twins, and the youngest was a daughter luckily.

Right. So was she the golden child?

I would think so probably; she is certainly now my parents have died, she is certainly the
focal point of the family.

Oh really.

But that always happens.

Simply because she’s the girl?

That's right.

And when you say it was a disappointment to your parents that you were a boy, I mean were
you very conscious of that, and are you saying that rather seriously?
Sir Roger Gibbs Page 2
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
No no no, I'm saying it rather frivolously.

And, I wondered if we could look a bit at your family history. I seem to remember that your
great-grandfather was fairly prominent in the City.

Yes, he was, like the chairmen of quite a number of merchant banks, he was Governor of the
Bank of England for two years, I think from 1878 to 1880, but it went on a sort of rota basis
in those days.

And do you know anything about his time as Governor?

I really don't know anything about his time as Governor, but it was extremely uneventful
compared to the days of Lord Richardson and Mr Leigh-Pemberton. Very quiet.

And he had a family bank or what was it?

A family bank that was founded in 1808, Anthony Gibbs & Sons which, they were really
more merchant adventurers as opposed to bankers, and they had some very good times and
some very bad times. I mean people like Barings have done the same, but Barings flourishes
in the 1990s and Anthony Gibbs in actual fact was taken over by the Hong Kong Bank in
1979.

Oh so it kept going as late as that. And did you have any involvement with it?

No, they never offered me a job. That was probably one of their better decisions!

And did any of your brothers work for them?

Yes, two of my brothers. My eldest brother David, and my third brother Julian, they were
both in Anthony Gibbs. But also there were first cousins, and there were quite a few of the
family in it, so there really wasn't room for many more when my turn came.

And were you conscious of the bank as a child, was it part of your childhood?
Sir Roger Gibbs Page 3
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
Oh very much. My father was, he was eventually Chairman of Anthony Gibbs but he was
also Chairman of the Australia & New Zealand Bank from, I think 1951 to 1967, that sort of
time. So he was a distinguished banker.

And as a child were you taken to the bank?

Oh certainly, yes, we were either taken to the bank in the City, not very often but
occasionally, I think when my father was feeling brave enough, or to Girl Guide
headquarters, because my mother was, she ran the overseas side of the Girl Guides. So it was
either Buckingham Palace Road or Bishopsgate.

And what are your memories of Bishopsgate as a child?

Extremely gloomy, dingy, everyone very much on their best behaviour; everyone very
friendly but pretty uninspiring.

So it didn't make you think, I must join this.

It didn’t, no. It never entered my head that I ever would.

And were you shown things like gold in the vaults and things like that?

Nothing very exciting happened at Anthony Gibbs, nothing like that at all, no.

And did you have an impression of the City at that time?

I think my impression of the City was, probably if I thought about it at all, I was a bit
bewildered by it all, it all seemed very big, very complicated, and something to be avoided.

And were any family stories passed down about your great-grandfather?

Well there were rhymes written about the Gibbs family and their trading, and one of them is
quite unrepeatable, but...
Sir Roger Gibbs Page 4
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
Is it really unrepeatable?

Yes. I can’t actually remember the detail of it, but...I would have to get hold of the book
about Anthony Gibbs which was published I think in the 1970s, which has it in full, and
various other anecdotes. But they were an extraordinarily respectable set-up, always
considered to be straight as a die, but I think pretty effective but not particularly imaginative.
Although, I mean things like the finance for the Great Western Railway, that was produced
by Anthony Gibbs, and I think it was my great-grandfather who was a particular friend of
Brunel, and there were those sort of connections.

So as a boy did you grow up knowing about Brunel as well as banking?

Not a lot. I think my much more intelligent elder brothers probably did, but I concentrated
more on sport.

And, what about your father’s father, was he any part of your life?

Well again he was chairman of the family bank, and he died when I was two or three so I
really didn’t know him.

And did you pick up any stories about the sort of character he was?

Oh I think he was a thoroughly steadfast, marvellous, affable character. Very much like my
father and his younger brother actually, my father’s younger brother, Humphrey Gibbs, who
was Governor of Rhodesia.

Governor...?

Of Rhodesia.

Oh right. Gosh, at what point?

He disagreed with Mr Ian Smith on most things, it was at that point.
Sir Roger Gibbs Page 5
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
And so was that part of your family discussions round the table? Was that very much a part
of...?

Oh very much so, because not only our great interest, and my Uncle Humphrey and Aunt
Molly and their family in Southern Rhodesia, but my mother was particularly interested in
Africa, and oh, it was a burning topic, in fact probably the most, I would think it was the most
frequent topic in family conversation.

And to somebody young that can often be a great turn-off, that the last thing you ever want to
hear about is Rhodesia, or did you get very drawn in?

Well, I think we met so many interesting people from Africa, and...no, it wasn’t a turn-off,
but we thought it went on a bit much at times.

And were the family views, would they all tend to agree or were there varying viewpoints
coming out from the different members of the family?

I think of the six of us, and my parents, we didn’t always agree; in fact we very often
disagreed, possibly not on major principles and things like that, but we always aired our
views and were encouraged to air our views on any subject as forcibly within reason as we
liked. And therefore debate was always very lively indeed, and never acrimonious, but
lively.

And can you sort of isolate what different people’s viewpoints would have been? Was it
consistent, or not?

I think some of us got quite entrenched from time to time, yes.

And which direction would you have been entrenched?

Well I was...I was certainly academically the most unsuccessful member of the family, in the
same bracket as my sister. The other four were distinctly above average. So I think one was
a little bit swamped.
Sir Roger Gibbs Page 6
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
So you mean you wouldn’t have voiced your opinion, or you might have been more liberal, or
what?

I probably wouldn’t at that stage of my life have voiced too many opinions on too many
things. I was much keener to get the conversation over with and get out on the tennis court.

And were you close to your sister as a child, was there an alliance between you?

All six of us in actual fact, our average age is now 58, and all six of us are still very close, we
always have been too, which has been...which has made life even more enjoyable.

And does that mean that now you’ve got a great affection between you that allows you to all
have very different views and it doesn't matter, or that you have roughly speaking similar
views?

I think we...we certainly have different views, and we're in different fields, and we've pursued
different avenues, but we come across, well our paths cross many times nowadays.

And, did you have any kind of particular alliance with your mother?

Yes, I think I was particularly close to both my parents, but I think...when I say I was
particularly close, I was, but I think so were the other five; we were a very close family.

We talked a little about your paternal grandfather but you obviously didn't know him very
much. What about his wife, did you know your grandmother?

Well only just, she died shortly after that. No, I think that, going back to my parents, that my
father was a very distinguished businessman and a person with a great sense of humour, and
was incredibly kind and thoughtful, but he was for the fairly steady pattern of life, whereas
my mother was more imaginative, and much more dashing, and had much more obvious
enthusiasm for everything, and everyone.

Do you know where they met?
Sir Roger Gibbs Page 7
C409/086 Tape 1 Side A (part 1)
I don’t know where they met no, but they got married when she was 21 and he was 24. But I
remember one thing to describe my mother best I think, is when the person who gave the
address at her memorial service, when there were an awful lot of people there, he said, ‘There
are always three words that will remind me of Helen Gibbs: “Do tell me”, and so often before
you had the chance, she told you.’ And it brought a sort of gasp of appreciation out of the
entire congregation of four or five hundred people, and the reason was that he had really hit
the nail on the head, because she was longing for you, whoever you were, and from whatever
walk of life, to know what she thought, but she was also fascinated to find out what you
thought.

Do you know much about how your father grew up?

I’m afraid I don’t, but my younger brother Christopher would be a great expert on that but I
don’t. But they lived in a large family home in Hertfordshire called Briggins, about five
miles from Ware, and that eventually became a hotel like so many of those houses.

So you would have gone to that as a very young child, and then it vanished from your life
really?

Yes, it was there, or thereabouts, for a long time, but I used to go there occasionally as a child
to visit my uncle Walter Aldenham, who was Chairman of the Westminster Bank for quite a
while, and his wife Beatrix. But it was a fairly sort of forbidding place. But my father was
one of six children. Walter Aldenham was the eldest, and Humphrey Gibbs was the youngest
brother, and my father was the second youngest child. And there were three sisters, Winifred
Ponsonby and then two spinsters, Barbara and Rosalind, and I think they were two of those
people who knew a lot of very nice young men, you know, in the sort of 1910 to 1920 period,
but unfortunately so few of them got through to the 1920 period, and they decided, you know,
they would go their own quiet ways and not get married.

Do you know what happened to them?

What happened to them, those aunts? Oh they did more good works in Hertfordshire than
you would believe possible.