Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

commented that ‘An outstanding feature of the Norfolk season has been the consistently sound and often brilliant batting of the captain. Several times his was the highest score in an innings and many times Michael Falcon went in after those before him had done poorly and when a critical stage had been reached.’ A highlight was his innings of 42 against the West Indians which helped Norfolk to a first-innings lead in a drawn game. His success surpassed even his form of 1937; quite why he should have had such triumphs after a few relatively fallow years and at such an advanced age is a mystery. It allows us, though, to say of Michael Falcon that his batting career was significantly interrupted by both World Wars, which puts him in a very small club indeed. Life At North Burlingham: 1931-1969 After several years at Havering-atte-Bower, Essex, making his living as a merchant of hops, Michael Falcon decided on a career change. In 1930 his father introduced him to the Norwich Union Insurance Society and he became a non-executive director of the company in 1936. (His father had been President from 1930 to 1936.) The following year he bought into the brewing firm of Lacon’s, a sizeable concern founded in the eighteenth century, its shares quoted on the London Stock Exchange, with its main brewery 54 in Great Yarmouth and over 300 ‘tied’ houses. The only son of the chairman, Ernest Lacon, had died young – he also had three daughters – and Michael Falcon was to act almost as a surrogate ‘son’ until the old man’s grandsons were old enough to join him on the board. In the event Ernest Lacon died in June 1936, so that Falcon became the company’s deputy chairman and later chairman, in charge of the day-to-day running of the business for 92 Elder Statesman: 1930-1939 Possibly the only action photograph of Michael Falcon batting. Taken in 1939. 54 The Lacon company trademark was a falcon, but this predated the Falcon family’s involvement with the business and seems to have been an odd coincidence.