Peter W. Rowley ’55

Peter Rowley — author, playwright, philanthropist, and land developer — was born July 20, 1934, into an estate-owning British family. He came to the United States at age 11 in the last convoy of the European phase of World War II.

In Spoils of War: A Trans-Atlantic Tale, his 2005 autobiography, Peter described his Princeton undergraduate years, including brief glimpses of Donald Rumsfeld ’54 and Ralph Nader ’55. His other books were New Gods in America (1971) and Ken Rosewall: Twenty Years at the Top (1976).

Peter inherited the Morcott estate in Rutland, England, became “lord of the manor” of family property in Cambridgeshire, and was deeply involved in the properties, investing substantial sums, including a one-million-pound donation to the Rowley Art Center. Moved by the fate of his brother, John, who was shell-shocked at Dunkirk, Peter was a dedicated pacifist, asserting that “no violence ordered by elderly politicians, using young men (and now women), justifies the death of a single human being.”