[4] 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.
[5] 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 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.
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.
In 1929 a friend from his Oxford days invited him read a chapter of Ivanhoe on The Children's Hour for the BBC at Savoy Hill House.
He was paid three guineas so he resigned from Fortnum and Mason and spent the next four years acting in radio plays with the BBC Repertory Company.
Grisewood's most taxing effort was in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II when, during the interval, he rushed to the Variety Studio to perform a Vaudeville song in John Watt's show.
In September 1936 he was involved in anxious discussions about what would happen if the King decided that he wished to broadcast without the previous knowledge of the government and the Director General.
The King's broadcast was transmitted from Windsor Castle with Lord Reith in attendance, a watershed, and Grisewood knew that many of the values he believed in had been defeated permanently.
Kirkpatrick, a career diplomat, had been transferred by the Government using its wartime powers, from the Foreign Office to the new post of controller of the European division, responsible to the Director-General.
[1] Later in 1946 he was demoted to 'Director – Talks Division' (or Assistant head [citation needed]) where he was restless: disliking the departmental in-fighting and what he saw as an increasing left-wing bias, he resigned in July 1947.
He believed that difficulty had a value, both in creative and in personal terms and eagerly accepted his role as defender of the highbrow in early post war Britain.
Grisewood, in his position as Assistant Director General of the BBC, was portrayed by Nicholas Woodeson in the 2008 TV programme Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story.
His autobiography One Thing at a Time (1968) described the conflict over Anthony Eden's attempt to force the BBC to treat the Suez Crisis of 1956 as a national war.
He possessed a writer's itch producing stories, poetry and long observant funny letters in a lovely flowing hand.
He lived alone for his last decades in Eye, Suffolk, the last surviving member of the group of Roman Catholic intellectuals and artists that included David Jones, Tom Burns and Rene Hague, Eric Gill's son in law.
The concept of dumbing down always appalled him and he wrote a very caustic and persuasive paper De procliviate ad levitatem (of a propensity towards shallowness) during the later part of his life.