Life
His father, the son of a Welsh clergyman, worked in a bank until he transferred to his wife's family catering business. Reese said "I played card games before I could read". As a small boy, when his mother "issued the standard warning about not talking to strange men, my father remarked that it was the strange men who should be warned against trying to talk to me".
His mother Anne ran a hotel near Guildford, and with it a bridge club, so Reese played in the earliest duplicate matches, around 1930. Whilst at Oxford he met some serious bridge players, amongst whom were Lt.-Col. Walter Buller, Iain Macleod and Maurice Harrison-Gray, the strongest player in the country at that time. Within a year of graduating and after a brief stint at Harrod's, Reese started working for Hubert Phillips' magazine and co-authored his first book with him in 1937. Phillips acknowledges that although the book is published jointly under their names, "Terence is the real author of the book", receiving only assistance in planning contents and editing from Phillips. From that point on, Reese's profession was that of a champion contract bridge player and prolific writer on the game.
Reese joined the ARP a few months before the war, and was never inducted into the armed forces. He ended up working in the factory of Pedro Juan (a fellow bridge player), which manufactured black-out curtains. When a Ministry of Labour inspector turned up to check on him, a hasty phone-call was needed to get Terence into an office surrounded by ledgers.
Reese had some hobbies; even those he pursued with typical commitment. He was always a cricket and chess enthusiast. After World War II he made a book on greyhound racing; later he became an avid football fan, reputedly supporting Queen's Park Rangers, whose ground was next door to the White City Stadium, a home of greyhound racing. He played various other games for money, especially canasta, poker and backgammon, and wrote books on them.
Reese edited the British Bridge World from 1956 to 1962. He married Alwyn Sherrington in 1970. They resided in London and later in Hove, Sussex where he died of aspirin poisoning at home on 29 January 1996 at the age of 83; an inquest ruled his death accidental.
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Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“My life has crept so long on a broken wing
Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)