Two Obituaries are available below...

Patrick Jourdain

John Williams

Dr Eastland Stuart Staveley, 8th June 1926 – 27th November 2009

Stuart Staveley of Ross-shire, who has died aged 83, was a code-breaker at Bletchley Park in the last year of the war as a rarity, a British teenager who knew Japanese.  He later became a key administrator for the game of bridge in England and then for the International Bridge Press Association, a club of the world’s bridge journalists.

Eastland Stuart Staveley was born on 8th June 1926 to a middle-class family in Birkenhead where his father taught history at the local school.

Staveley went up to Queen’s College, Oxford to read ancient history. He had already volunteered for the navy and during his first year at college was recruited by naval intelligence. His interviewer was Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books.

Staveley went on a course to learn Japanese before being transferred to Bletchley Park, the subject of the 2001 film “Enigma”.  

After the war he completed his studies at Oxford, taking a doctorate. He lectured in ancient history at St Andrew’s University and then Bedford College, London.

Dr. Staveley was musical and sang in the Liverpool Philharmonic Choir. He met his first wife, Anne, at the University opera society. From 1965 to 1978 the two of them were the staff of the growing English Bridge Union, initially with world bridge champion Dimmie Fleming as Secretary, and then on their own from their home in Thame, Oxon.  When membership reached 8,000 the Staveleys created the first office of the EBU across the road from their house. With membership now three times as great the office is in Aylesbury. Staveley was a county bridge-player who was in the Oxfordshire team that won the County Championship for the Tollemache Cup in 1974.

Dr & Mrs Staveley retired to Shieldaig in Scotland in 1978. Mrs Staveley became Membership Secretary for the International Bridge Press Association. When she died in 1985 Dr Staveley took over the post for twenty years until he retired at the 2005 World Bridge Championships in Estoril.

In 1986 Dr Staveley married again. His second wife, also Anne, had been the best friend of his first wife when they had been at school together in Bolton.

Staveley was a man who eschewed modern technology. Travel by aeroplane was avoided, no computer was allowed in the house. Reports were produced on an ancient typewriter but were always precise and accurate.

A friend recalls that he was meticulous, sometimes to excess. Bridge stories from World and European Bridge Championships were posted to the world’s bridge journalists the morning after each event ended. On one occasion the postal rate was quoted as a cent short of the full franc. The purchaser was expected to round up. But Staveley returned from the Post Office with one hundred stamps of fifty cents, two hundred of twenty cents, etc. Later, as his colleagues licked the four hundredth stamp, there was some cursing under breath.

Staveley had one son who predeceased him and leaves a widow and two grandchildren.

Patrick Jourdain. From an obituary for the Daily Telegraph.

Former colleague John Williams also let us know his memories of Stuart, here.