William Clarke, though of high spirits and Catholic tastes, was an embodiment of the Protestant ethic. All his life he demonstrated a keen sense of duty, flung himself enthusiastically into his work, believed with passion in freedom of conscience and freedom of business.

Virtually a pillar of the establishment of the City of London, Clarke in 1958 published a seminal work on finance’s invisible earnings, profoundly convinced as he was of the curiously under-appreciated importance of such