> Michael Valentine Briton Riviere, T.D., M.A., D.Litt., F.R.S.L.
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Michael Valentine Briton Riviere, T.D., M.A., D.Litt., F.R.S.L.

Michael Riviere was born in Norwich in 1919 into a Huguenot family. While still an undergraduate at Oxford, he enlisted in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry in 1939 and was commissioned into the regiment, one of the British Army's few remaining mounted units. He was a fine horseman and made the most of any opportunity for steeplechasing that came his way until the regiment went into action in Crete in 1941 where he was taken prisoner and mentioned in despatches. He escaped from the prison camp at Lübeck and made his way west, lying up in woods by day, walking by night, until he crossed the Dutch border and was recaptured near Bentheim. He was then sent to the prisoner-of-war camp at Eichstätt, from which he escaped in the following summer, only to be recaptured while still on the wrong side of the Danube. This time he was sent to Colditz and his adventures were over. Often in solitary confinement, Riviere settled down to writing verse and studying brewing in anticipation of his return to civilian life and a directorship of Steward and Patteson. Poetry was a great solace during his incarceration and as time hung heavily on his hands he read widely, especially the English poets of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He carried his copy of the Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse through six years of military training, campaigns, prison camps and escapes so that, by 1945, he knew the contents by heart. At home in Norfolk once more, he took an active part in the life of the county and it is for his long service with the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, the Norfolk Record Society (of both of which he was president) and, above all, the Centre for East Anglian Studies that he will be remembered in antiquarian circles. He was the first chairman of the newly founded Centre from 1967-73 and assumed office again from 1983-5, retiring only when ill-health began to limit his activities. He encouraged the Centre's early ventures into publishing, set up and contributed generously to its endowment fund and formed the East Anglian history dining group which generated many research projects, including that of the Norwich Survey. As secretary of the Friends of Norwich Castle Museum, he was a strong supporter of the trustees' efforts to place the Norwich School of painters within a national and international context and he played a key role in developing the Rotunda of the Castle into an integral part of the museum. Funds were low and it was thanks to a generous grant from Watney Mann, of which Riviere was then a director, that the work was completed to a high standard. The restoration of Dragon Hall in Norwich, one of Britain's most outstanding timber-framed buildings, was brokered by Riviere when the near-derelict building was purchased by the city for a token sum from Grand Metropolitan Hotels, which had taken over Watney Mann. Riviere was a discriminating collector of early Italian prints, Cotman etchings and engravings and oil paintings of Norfolk worthies, many of which he donated to the Centre for East Anglian Studies. In retirement, Riviere and his wife spent their summers restoring an oil-master's house and mill in Corfu but, always a brewer, he returned to Dilham for the barley harvest. Riviere died there on 10 May 1997 and, in his own words:

To end here, in this region,

Long seemed appropriate

To one who has made of it

Almost a religion.