Morley

Morley town (1991 pop. 44,652), Leeds metropolitan district, N England. Woolen textiles and many other products are made. Coal is mined in the area. The town was besieged by royalists in the English civil war. Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st earl of Oxford and Asquith , was born in Morley.

Morley, John (1838–1923). Journalist and politician. The son of a north country surgeon, and educated at Oxford, Morley used free-lance journalism as a stepping-stone to the editorship of the Fortnightly Review (1867–82), which under his direction became a major vehicle for the propagation of a new species of radical Liberalism, campaigning against jingoism, imperial adventures, repression in Ireland; it was Morley, together with Joseph Chamberlain and Charles Dilke, who formulated the so-called Radical Programme (1885). Elected to Parliament in 1883, Morley, now a Home Ruler, broke with Chamberlain over Ireland, serving as Irish secretary in Gladstone's last ministry (1892–4) and under Rosebery (1894–5). Morley denounced British policy in South Africa at the time of the Boer War, but virtually retired to write a much-acclaimed life of Gladstone. As a member of the Liberal governments of 1905–14 he was responsible for the reform of the British administration of India, resigning in 1914 over the issue of war with Germany.

Geoffrey Alderman

Morley, Malcolm (1931– ). British painter, active mainly in the USA. In the 1960s he turned from abstract to figurative work and became one of the pioneers of Superrealism. From about 1970, however, his paintings became increasingly loose in handling, often depicting animals in lush landscapes. In 1984 he was the first winner of the Turner Prize, awarded for ‘the greatest contribution to art in Britain in the previous twelve months’, a decision that occasioned much controversy as Morley had been living in New York since 1958.