Memory Eternal! Christ is risen!
Michael Edward Asser’s 80th birthday was on May 22nd, 2022; he died on October 10th, 2022.
Michael was born in Tottenham, London and grew up in Bedfordshire. He left school at 16, worked in Luton Libraries and then trained as a librarian. He rose to be County Librarian of Berkshire at the age of 34 (one of the youngest ever at that time) and retired at 54 as Director of Leisure and Arts for Oxfordshire County Council.
On retirement, he spent two years brushing up his Latin and Greek and then completed a Classics Degree with the OU.
He published a translation of the Old Greek Psalter The Psalter of the Prophet and King David with the Nine Biblical Odes and also completed a translation of the entire Greek Old Testament: The Septuagint. This was being edited for publication in the USA – a lengthy process that didn’t make it to hard copy but is on Lulu Michael Asser: The Septuagint
He lectured annually on the Septuagint at the Midlands Orthodox Seminary in Walsall.
He converted from Roman Catholicism to Orthodox Christianity in 1998. For some time, he was the President of the Board for the The Church of the 318 Godbearing Fathers in Shrewsbury and was an ordained Reader for the church. He had a profound faith and belief.
He was passionate about knowledge; he loved music: classical, jazz, and rock. He knew everything about Dylan and Wagner and Greek and Roman chant as well as the Beatles, the Band, and Prince and Springsteen, not forgetting Elvis. He wanted to find out everything he could about the Titanic and anything about American politics in the Kennedy and Watergate eras as well as English history. He was very unknowledgeable about football but liked to brag about how Spurs were doing.
He loved reading a wide variety of literature: fiction and non-fiction: Monty Python to Le Carré and Tolstoy, Agatha Christie and Jeffery Farnol to MR James Melville and P G Wodehouse; and poetry: Yeats, David Jones, Basil Bunting, Heaney, George Barker.
He loved gardening, singing, cooking, walking, playing CDs, listening to the Met opera on Radio 3, watching athletics on TV (especially when Gabby Logan and Michael Johnson were presenting), and going to the cinema, as well as his music and reading, and was also marvellous at ironing.
He had two daughters from his first marriage to Val: the elder, Rosalind, is a consultant psychiatrist; the younger, Kate, is a civil servant working for HMRC.
Mike and Liz were together for 33 years and married for 25 of those years.
