The son of a school teacher, Arthur Sulley was educated at Denstone College, where his father was once a master. After Denstone, Sulley junior went to Selwyn College, Cambridge. He was a keen sportsman who played cricket and rugby for Market Harborough and, during his time at Cambridge, was cox to the winning Boat Race crews of 1928 and 1929. Also in 1928, he was cox to the Thames Rowing Club eight that won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley, and was cox to them when they won the silver medal, representing Great Britain, at the Amsterdam Olympics.
A director of a company that made uniforms for Midland Railway Company employees, Sulley was married to Margery Cann-Evans, a former cox of the Newnham ladies eight during her time as a Cambridge undergraduate. Despite many individual successes as coxes, the pair’s proudest moment must have been in 1958 when their son James won the first of two Cambridge Blues. He was one of four sons of former Blues in the Cambridge boat that year, but he made history because, at the time, it was the only known case on record where father and son had both coxed for the light blues.
Great Britain