Bower, Sir John Dykes, (1905-1981), organist

Born in Gloucester in 1905, the third of four sons of Ernest Dykes Bower MD, a general practitioner and ophthalmic surgeon, and his wife, Margaret Dora Constance Sheringham. Two of his brothers (Michael and Wilfrid) became well-known doctors, and the other, Stephen Ernest Dykes Bower, an architect who carried out work at Magdalene College.

Educated at Cheltenham College and at the same time was a pupil of Herbert Brewer, organist of Gloucester Cathedral.
1922 admitted to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and won the John Stewart of Rannoch university scholarship in music in 1922 and 1925.

1926-1929 - organist at Truro (1926–9)
1929 - organist at New College, Oxford
1933 - cathedral organist at Durham, with a university lectureship
1934-37 - Corpus Christi College elected him a (non-resident) fellow
1936 - appointed to St Paul's Cathedral

During the Second World War he lost everything in the bombing of London
1940 - joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and, with the rank of squadron leader, worked in the Air Ministry
1945-1952 - he continued work at St Paul's and was also associate director of the Royal School of Church Music
1936-1969 - professorship of organ at the Royal College of Music
1967 - retired sue to bad eyesight

1953 - appointed CVO
1968 - knighted
1944 - Oxford made him an honorary DMus
1980 - Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi, Cambridge
1967-68 - master of the Worshipful Company of Musicians

He died, unmarried, on 29 May 1981 in Kent

Oxford Dictionaty of National Biography