' Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ', are the earliest words many of us baby boomers remember emanating from the radio at 1.45pm every day as we were tuned in to Listen with Mother on the Light Programme. What became a well known phrase was oiled out by a somewhat maternalistic, firmly upper middle class doyenne of the BBC, a Lord Reith supporter through and through. She then treated us to a song, a nursery rhyme and a brief story. I remember looking forward to this as a semi-exciting event, while preferring rather my mother -- strange to think she was a mere thirty five at the time -- reading me the Rupert Bear story that appeared every day in the Daily Express.
So we chugged along until the coronation in 1953 and then it was ' all change ' as, in common with many other families, we kept the television hired to view the big event and I graduated to Watch with Mother. There was Andy Pandy [ ' coming to play ' ], a gentle soul, a seemingly near relation, one might think, of Basil Fotherington Thomas, wandering along in the Down with Skool books, like Little Johnny Head-in Air [ if you can bear the double, Struwwelpeter analogy ], addressing the sky and the clouds with estimable affection. The Woodentops were there; so too of course were Bill and Ben, giving vent to their misogynistic tendencies, as they addressed with scant regard the most definitely inferior Little Weed, redolent to a degree of Elizabeth in the Just William series and I hope you are enjoying this romp through childhood culture of seventy years ago.
So the mid-1950s came upon us and with a cataclysmic roar too. If 22nd September 1955 is not etched, wherever you etch things, then it should be. For on that day ITV, Independent Television, started its full range of programmes and we were treated -- O Joy, O Rapture unforeseen -- to a second channel. What was the BBC to do? Answer: make the sleepy Archers come to life with a traumatic and violent event. Poor Grace Archer, highly desirable thirty year old wife of dashing young Phil, had to die heroically rescuing a horse from a blazing barn. The nation wept; we had not long before got over the passing of King George VI but the juggernaut of ITV sailed on, sometimes serenely, occasionally by no means so. Theories then abounded: had Grace in fact been disposed of by the BBC hierarchy because she [ Ysanne Churchman in real life ] was agitating for TV actors, and especially women, to be paid full Equity rates and her candle therefore needed to be snuffed out? However, it is not too late for such a wrong to be righted. Sixty five years later the plot lines in The Archers have become so bizarre; why not bring Grace back as she didn't die after all? Ysanne Churchman is still alive and well at 95 and she would be a mere chicken beside Peggy, still played by June Spencer who will be 101 this year.
So the BBC took fright and issued a cumbersome consultation paper in 1956, to all those in the UK with a TV, asking our opinions on programmes present and possibly to come. This gave young addicts an opportunity and an excuse to watch everything, certainly by day in holiday time as long as parental approval was forthcoming. I watched a variety of programmes in which I was not in the slightest interested. I recall particularly the glamorous wedding of Prince Rainier of Monaco and the pin-up girl of Hollywood, Grace Kelly, with whom I had not at that stage fallen in love, not yet having revelled in High Noon, surely the greatest Western ever made [ fairly closely followed by The Wild Bunch ].
The regular TV viewing for a 9 to 12 year old moved to the 5 o'clock children's slot. It was not yet the right time for the saucy double entendres of Captain Pugwash and The Magic Roundabout; instead we were presented with wondrous Boys Own style adventure stories: Union Jack [ NB please, not Union Flag ] waving, would have been Brexit tub thumping, apparently honest to goodness tales of derring do -- children's TV successors apparently to The Bridge on the River Kwai and Reach for the Sky.
Three in particular of these series come to mind; first The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, the heroic rescuer of the oppressed, especially damsels in distress, never far from other attractive personalities, including Merlin and Queen Guinevere -- and was there the slightest hint for older viewers that Sir L might actually be gracing her tent of a night in the soggy Wessex marshes? Anyway, we all joined in the signature tune:
Now listen to my story, yes listen while I sing
Of days of old in England, when Arthur was the King;
Of Merlin the magician and Guinevere the Queen
And Lancelot the bravest knight the world has ever seen.
In days of old, when knights were bold, the story's told
Of Lancelot.
He rode the wilds of England, adventures for to see
To rescue maidens in distress and help the poor and wee.
If anyone oppress you, he'd be their champion,
He fought a million battles and never lost the one.
Those who fitted into the ' wee ' category and especially if you were a maiden as well, must have been relieved to know that Lancelot would take time off fighting all those battles to implement his rescue plan.
Then there was the feisty William Tell and his life and death struggle with Lamburgher Gessler [ sounding just a bit close to a commercial for an early day MacDonalds with mint sauce ].
Come away, come away with William Tell,
Come away to the land he loved so well;
What a day, what a day when the apple fell
For Tell ........ and Switzerland.
So there he was, righting the wrongs imposed on the oppressed peasantry and we were introduced to the more dramatic characteristics of a nation we thought perhaps were all about expensive watches, fine chocolates, posh skiing and never going to war. And the apple which William T shot off his son's head with a crossbow bolt helped to make that fruit one of choice. To be truthful it had languished a little in the minds of some of us as the brilliant but sometimes tedious Isaac Newton leapt up in his orchard as the falling fruit hit him on the head and he exclaimed ' Eureka, my friend, you're a wonderful example of gravitational force ' or some such.
Finally, before this becomes an even more tedious travelogue of 1950s children's TV, there was the irrepressible and irreplaceable Richard Green as Robin Hood and celebrated for ever for his unique style of, and attachment to, his outlawish tights. You may recall the ditty:
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.
We can picture him, half way up an oak tree in Sherwood Forest with his celebrated girlfriend, MM, perched ever so demurely and dutifully astride his trusted staff while below the Sherriff of Nottingham speeds by on his charger or, in the modern parlance, charges by in his speedos. Robin hums the next verse:
He called the greatest archers to a tavern on the green;
He vowed to help the people of the King;
He handled all the troubles on the English country scene
And still found plenty of time to sing.
Robin turns to Marion [ or turns her over ] to give her the plan for the week ahead, ' On Wednesday I'll sort out these vagrants responsible for county lines; then on Thursday I'm going to deal with those cads stealing farm machinery, especially the sophisticated IT gear on tractors; on Friday I'll compete in the National Darts Championships at Turnham Green; and on Saturday I think I'll sing Idomeneo at Glyndebourne. '
You might be thinking, as we did then, that this was all about rampant British patriotism but you would be only partially correct. All these series were the work of American screenwriters, effectively refugees in England from their own country, having stood firm against, and then hounded out by, extreme right wing McCarthyism. This explains why the heroes: Lancelot, Tell and Hood all defended the downtrodden individual citizen in the name of the country's principles and ethos often against corrupt authority and officialdom.
And all the while the pervasive influence of advertising on television was taking hold. Into the soul and into the culture came these commercial juggernauts and for some of us they are still there sixty years later. The arrival of ITV was a real social revolution.
On BBC all looked well groomed;
Newscasters wore black tie and boomed.
Along came the Street
With ads so upbeat;
Normal service will not be resumed.
To celebrate sixty five years on, I give you The Musings Quiz. You obviously have to be pretty aged to attempt it: 30 questions about TV advertisements in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The answers follow the questions. If you score 20, that's respectable; 25 shows a high level of attentiveness and a good memory; 30 shows that you completely wasted your youth when you should have been reading War and Peace [ in Russian of course ].
1 The ..... ... kid is tough and strong
2 The ........ ring of confidence
3 ...... ..... are a minty bit stronger
4 ... .... as regular as time itself
5 My goodness my ........
6 ... adds brightness to whiteness
7 ..... makes ....... bounce with health
8 You'll wonder where the ...... went when you brush your teeth with .........
9 ........, buy some for Lulu
10 Go to work on an ...
11 ... meat for dogs ........ Active ....
12 A .... a day helps you work, rest and play
13 ...., .... cleans a big, big carpet for less than .... . .....
14 The job's well done, you're really satisfied when you clean with ... ... ...
15 .... ...... made to make your mouth water
16 The ten second sweet that's delicious to eat ........ Creamed ....
17 ...., the mint with a hole
18 Pick up a .......
19 ........., cool as a mountain stream
20 You're never alone with a .....
21 A ...... ....... works wonders
22 Fry's ....... ....... full of Eastern .......
23 ...... make tea bags make tea
24 Four kinds of ....... shampoo, one is for you
25 Tonic water by ....., you know who
26 The .... sign means happy motoring
27 We're going well, we're going ......, we're going well thanks to ..... ...... ......
28 ...... ..... too good to hurry mints
29 Don't just say brown, say .....
30 ........ looks good, tastes good and by golly it does you good
31 [ bonus question ] Hands that do dishes as soft as your face with .... ..... ..... ......
.
Was it all too easy or quite impossible? Here are the answers:
1 Milky Bar
2 Colegate
3 Trebor Mints
4 All Bran
5 Guinness
6 OMO
7 Trill .... budgies
8 yellow ... Pepsodent
9 Smarties
10 egg
11 PAL ........ Prolongs ... Life
12 Mars
13 1001, 1001 ........ half a crown
14 Vim Vim Vim!
15 Opal Fruits
16 Ambrosia .... Rice
17 Polo
18 Penguin
19 Consulate
20 Strand
21 Double Diamond
22 Turkish Delight ...... promise
23 Tetley
24 Sunsilk
25 Schhh
26 Esso
27 Shell ............ Shell Shell Shell
28 Murray Mints
29 Hovis
30 Mackeson
31 mild green Fairy Liquid
Happy viewing wherever you are; some people have a lot of that particular pastime ahead of them.
20th March 2020
20 March 2020
5 March 2020
The 1960s and the influence of Winchester College
The Sixties swung, ' Let's swap the wife ';
The Beatles sang, ' Peace, no more strife;
In love did I fall
With schools' hallowed halls,
Deciding to stay there for life.
' And ', as Frankie Howerd used to say ' it came to pass '; for myself that was a mildly distorted version of the old maxim ' Those who can, do; those who can't, teach '. This is of course a somewhat harsh judgement on the legions of women and men who want to do the education thing because they feel genuinely drawn to it, find themselves well suited, do a thoroughly good job and enjoy the process. At the same time I am no great admirer of those who explain joining this noble profession as a magnanimous gesture of self-sacrifice and are wont to let slip ever so incidentally, ' Of course I could have earned six times the salary as Chief Executive of Google, or prosecuting at the Old Bailey or lining up a job in the transformative cocaine business '.
I didn't really go into teaching anyway; rather like Big John drifting into town and staying all alone, I was just there, failing to grow up and never emerging. You can judge some of the favourite attractions and attachments in your life by what you see and hear; for me it has invariably been the odours. To enter a traditional school building and for the nasal passages to catch that blessed combination of boiled cabbage, yellow floor polish and a generous helping of Jeyes Fluid has, with its reassuring familiarity, always been perfect heaven.
Besides there is no escaping what is thick in the bloodstream. Going back generations on the Northern Ireland side, there is little else beyond schools. My three sisters and my brother all finished up in the same educational soup bowl. The next generation has produced only a modest 50% [ five out of ten ] with the non-educational trail blazers flourishing with equal elan.
I have already invaded too far on the readers' [ or is it reader's? ] valuable time with a wordy account of my early educational experiences but it was five years spent at Winchester College which persuaded me that a long, enduring relationship with its particularly idiosyncratic style of learning [ or is it teaching? ] was the answer to prayers never offered with sufficient frequency.
When all is said and done [ ie when a vast amount has been pompously stated and virtually nothing achieved ], it is people who make schools and, although I was affectionately struck by the grounds and architecture of Win Coll at the time, it was the staff -- the teachers, the dons as they were known in a classical environment, who had by far the strongest influence on us in the 1960s. With apologies therefore for a touch of self-plagiarism, I reproduce here an article written for The Trusty Servant [ the magazine for former students of Winchester College] when I retired from Gordonstoun in 2011. As is customary with accounts of boarding school life, you may need to make allowance for a hint of self-indulgence and a touch of the distantly incestuous.
Lessons for a Head
Peering inconsequentially into the bathroom mirror, contact lenses having been removed, and grateful always for the classical education I received at Win Coll, I decide to follow Milton's lead and consider how my light -- and indeed my life -- are spent.
Assuming that the teenage years may fairly be described as a crucially formative period, I find myself looking back, fortified by the luxury of time and aided by the expedient of hindsight, to appreciate what I learnt and from whom in the early 1960s. Before the slippered pantaloon beckons, I offer a range of snapshots, reflections on how I may have been helped to bestride the upper reaches of the slippery academic pole for quite a long stint.
Starting in ' Junior Part 1 ' with Podge Brodhurst, who had produced a full cricket bag for a proper game immediately before the siege of Tobruk, invariably affable but consistently workmanlike also, I immediately felt the benefit of a warm welcome. I was given my own nickname ' Piperides ', I was constantly reminded of the importance of planning with Sapiens qui prospicit, the motto of Malvern College, where Podge himself had been a boy. I was also introduced to his father-in-law, Harry Altham, whom I regarded as one of the true schoolmastering greats.
In that first year I studied Greek briefly with the very senior and highly academic Jerry Poynton. I understood not one word of what passed in his form room but I became profoundly impressed by the notion that undiluted, unadulterated scholarship, free from overtly materialistic relevance, was a practice of intrinsic merit and the sign of a civilised society. A little learning may be a dangerous thing but a lot of it is rather a good idea.
So on to Middle Part Three and Hubert Doggart, a cricketer out of the top drawer and later to be a Headmaster in Somerset. I already rather rated him [ we had the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne in common ] and at a very early stage of Winchester life he had given us first year students a lesson in lateral thinking during a Chapel time gathering in the most appealing Chantry, persuading us that the newly born daughter of a member of staff really could be a ' good man '. I experienced a variety of teaching methods in his form as I was obliged to toil up the pole [ a real one this time ] in his classroom and attest the Judaistic authenticity of the Almighty's son: ' Jesus was born in a Jewish stable, under a Jewish sky ....... ' I also learnt that stating the obvious is frequently necessary with young people. Christmas Spirit was Hubert's acronym for academic success. Much of it I fear I left behind but for many years I reminded the young ad nauseam that ' Industry gains it reward at examination time '.
In Middle Part 2, now established as one of the not-so-bright fraternity, I was also idle and difficult, ' uncommonly cheeky ' as a senior student in our house described me. I entered the lists with Marcus Hampton, a formidable figure [ as well as a considerable scholar ]from a slightly earlier age. The battle was tough and protracted; I was resilient but he much more so. As I slid reluctantly into submission I was left feeling that, while classroom life may perhaps be easier for the teacher who has a range of battlefield tactics, just occasionally a fearful concern by young people about the consequences of their actions may be no bad thing.
A somewhat different and certainly more modern approach was certainly employed by John Manisty, Housemaster for most of my dissolute years. One would have expected a man who had spent most of the war at the heart of top secret decoding work in Bletchley Park [ and even there assuming absolute responsibility for rail travel ] to remain as calm as he did but, in a surprising way, ' Fred ' exuded a quiet warmth as well. One of his real strengths lay in his end of term reports, a model for any pastoral chief to this day. What parents received was a poignant summary that was always direct, generous, reasonable and, even for a wastrel, tinged with hope.
When John Manisty was succeeded by Peter Partner and I had somehow inexplicably risen to a position of responsibility in the house, I began to appreciate the need for administrative structure. I failed to resist the urge to go into the Housemaster's study at 5.30am to order his papers and prioritise the contents of his desk. Peter was a man full of humour as well as scholarship and he wasn't short of the milk of human kindness either. Interviewing prospective housemasters many years later, I suggested they would be dong well with the most senior student members of their houses if the letter wanted to spend most of the summer holidays in their company, as I had done in my last year with the Partner family in a villa outside Rome.
Grahame Drew, in addition to his artistic skills, provided an example of a thoroughly nice man who was not afraid to go his own, sometimes peculiar, way. His expressions of generosity, that were neither deserved nor expected any thanks, were unusual at that time. In 1963 I watched most of the Test series against the West Indies, including Colin Cowdrey batting with a broken arm, at his house when I should have been doing other things.
We all wanted to visit Anthony Wood's house for a different sort of diversion. His family boasted, in an exclusively male and largely monastic community, the most eligible au pair girl to be found on Kingsgate Street. Tony wrote exceptionally good text books for ordinary A Level historians like myself but it was his modesty that I particularly remember. We were on a visit to Normandy in 1964, taking in both the beaches and the Bayeux Tapestry. I vividly remember Tony, an early arrival on those beaches in 1944, saying in a completely matter of fact way as we wandered down a country lane ' I think this was the ditch I jumped into when German soldiers appeared, firing at us '. We still have much to learn from the self-effacement of that wartime generation.
In my latter years most of my positively spent time was consumed in athletics and the Combined Cadet Force. I therefore saw a good deal of John Hunter Durran. In him was life, even if it wasn't quite the variety to which the fourth gospel writer referred. Dealing with unpredictable adult behaviour is a formative experience for young people and Hunter D, emerging from nowhere on CCF camp, brandishing and indeed firing a large pistol above his head, was an example which it would be difficult to better.
In, for me, the dizzy heights of the form or class known as Senior Part 2 I marvelled at Ronnie Hamilton, that most stylish and consummate performer, with his immaculate dress sense and with us tapping our fingers on our Victorian desks in admiring approval. He was at his best in the Masque [ a home spun history of the School ] in 1961. You could sense him believing every word of the marvellous lyrics when, hobby-horse in lively action and in the role of former Headmaster, Dr Burton, referring to his ' beloved ' Commoners [ as opposed to Scholars ] he sang ' I found them more congenial; the College men so menial '. At that moment, if not before, I realised that all teachers are actors.
But that doesn't prevent them from having integrity. I regarded John Gammell as a giant in every way and especially for the value of his honesty. This quality could have surprising manifestations. I remember discussing with ' Gam ' in his study a somewhat humdrum essay I had produced on racial discrimination [ quite advanced for 1965! ]. I did not know where to put myself when he suggested I ought to consider the theory that antipathetic views towards certain people might be linked to the supposed generosity of their physical endowment.
Without doubt I benefited from my dealings with the man at the top, Desmond Lee. I quite a few run-ins with him as Headmaster; one of us was wise and one was foolish -- and there are no prizes for guessing who was which. He was not just merciful with a poacher, turned gamekeeper, turned poacher, he gave real responsibility where he saw a glimmer of talent. In 1965 [ as in 2020 perchance ] Winchester was on the threshold of a revolution in sport; Geoffrey Dyson, a controversial national athletics figure, was consulted and then employed as a guru. When he first visited the School, Desmond Lee not only gave me the task of hosting him for a whole day and a half, he also handed over the same confidential briefing document that had been issued to certain members of the Common Room. I kept it for a long time as a reminder that the interests of the challenging, energetic student [ or staff member for that matter ] are best served by promoting him or her out of sight.
For various reasons I failed to say good-bye to this rightly respected classical scholar. Almost forty years later I was wandering in the churchyard at Granchester, looking at epitaphs on grave stones, one of my quieter, later life occupations. I stood at the end of an impressive full-size flat stone, looked down and there he was or, rather, the name came up to greet me ' Sir Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee '. I was therefore able to apologise for my many misdemeanours and to say farewell. He was of my father's generation and style; most of us who have followed have been pale imitations.
Finally the person from whom I learnt most at Winchester was Mark Stephenson. In my whole education he was the only teacher or supervisor to give me an alpha [ or A* ] for any piece of work -- an essay in fact on ' King Alfred, just a plodder '. For ever since I have appreciated the value of encouragement.
I used to go to Mark's study in College, the Scholars' boarding house where he was the resident tutor, for tasktimes, the equivalent of a university tutorial, a discussion with no other students present on an essay recently written. These were intentionally challenging occasions, academically of course but, I recall, once personally as well. Mark gave me an apple, a generous gesture but I realised as it was largely consumed that there was no receptacle into which I could place core and stalk. As Mark watched me, I suspected this might be something of a test and I decided, without blinking or blanching, to swallow it all. I think he approved of this.
Thirty years later I was attending a summer holiday charity tennis tournament at Gordonstoun. A Head does not always hit it off perfectly with his predecessor, especially if the latter had been an iconic figure and brilliant at everything, which mine certainly had. There was a slight stiffness in the air therefore as we met at the ice cream counter and exchanged a few pleasantries about not very much. I took a substantial mouthful of my cornet and, only having done so, did I realise that I had admitted into my mouth an expeditionary and now rather angry wasp. What to do? I was cornered, knowing that either a sudden oral ejection or a rapid disappearance to the bushes could be interpreted as a sign of discourtesy and weakness. I therefore decided simply to munch away, talking all the while, the roof of my mouth considerably stung, my taste buds in disarray and my throat fearing the wasp's continuing effectiveness.
At that moment I came of age as a Head and quietly thanked Mark Stephenson for preparing me for this challenge and for teaching me that the only real lesson you need to learn is, whatever the adversity, just smile and carry on.
5th March 2020
The Beatles sang, ' Peace, no more strife;
In love did I fall
With schools' hallowed halls,
Deciding to stay there for life.
' And ', as Frankie Howerd used to say ' it came to pass '; for myself that was a mildly distorted version of the old maxim ' Those who can, do; those who can't, teach '. This is of course a somewhat harsh judgement on the legions of women and men who want to do the education thing because they feel genuinely drawn to it, find themselves well suited, do a thoroughly good job and enjoy the process. At the same time I am no great admirer of those who explain joining this noble profession as a magnanimous gesture of self-sacrifice and are wont to let slip ever so incidentally, ' Of course I could have earned six times the salary as Chief Executive of Google, or prosecuting at the Old Bailey or lining up a job in the transformative cocaine business '.
I didn't really go into teaching anyway; rather like Big John drifting into town and staying all alone, I was just there, failing to grow up and never emerging. You can judge some of the favourite attractions and attachments in your life by what you see and hear; for me it has invariably been the odours. To enter a traditional school building and for the nasal passages to catch that blessed combination of boiled cabbage, yellow floor polish and a generous helping of Jeyes Fluid has, with its reassuring familiarity, always been perfect heaven.
Besides there is no escaping what is thick in the bloodstream. Going back generations on the Northern Ireland side, there is little else beyond schools. My three sisters and my brother all finished up in the same educational soup bowl. The next generation has produced only a modest 50% [ five out of ten ] with the non-educational trail blazers flourishing with equal elan.
I have already invaded too far on the readers' [ or is it reader's? ] valuable time with a wordy account of my early educational experiences but it was five years spent at Winchester College which persuaded me that a long, enduring relationship with its particularly idiosyncratic style of learning [ or is it teaching? ] was the answer to prayers never offered with sufficient frequency.
When all is said and done [ ie when a vast amount has been pompously stated and virtually nothing achieved ], it is people who make schools and, although I was affectionately struck by the grounds and architecture of Win Coll at the time, it was the staff -- the teachers, the dons as they were known in a classical environment, who had by far the strongest influence on us in the 1960s. With apologies therefore for a touch of self-plagiarism, I reproduce here an article written for The Trusty Servant [ the magazine for former students of Winchester College] when I retired from Gordonstoun in 2011. As is customary with accounts of boarding school life, you may need to make allowance for a hint of self-indulgence and a touch of the distantly incestuous.
Lessons for a Head
Peering inconsequentially into the bathroom mirror, contact lenses having been removed, and grateful always for the classical education I received at Win Coll, I decide to follow Milton's lead and consider how my light -- and indeed my life -- are spent.
Assuming that the teenage years may fairly be described as a crucially formative period, I find myself looking back, fortified by the luxury of time and aided by the expedient of hindsight, to appreciate what I learnt and from whom in the early 1960s. Before the slippered pantaloon beckons, I offer a range of snapshots, reflections on how I may have been helped to bestride the upper reaches of the slippery academic pole for quite a long stint.
Starting in ' Junior Part 1 ' with Podge Brodhurst, who had produced a full cricket bag for a proper game immediately before the siege of Tobruk, invariably affable but consistently workmanlike also, I immediately felt the benefit of a warm welcome. I was given my own nickname ' Piperides ', I was constantly reminded of the importance of planning with Sapiens qui prospicit, the motto of Malvern College, where Podge himself had been a boy. I was also introduced to his father-in-law, Harry Altham, whom I regarded as one of the true schoolmastering greats.
In that first year I studied Greek briefly with the very senior and highly academic Jerry Poynton. I understood not one word of what passed in his form room but I became profoundly impressed by the notion that undiluted, unadulterated scholarship, free from overtly materialistic relevance, was a practice of intrinsic merit and the sign of a civilised society. A little learning may be a dangerous thing but a lot of it is rather a good idea.
So on to Middle Part Three and Hubert Doggart, a cricketer out of the top drawer and later to be a Headmaster in Somerset. I already rather rated him [ we had the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne in common ] and at a very early stage of Winchester life he had given us first year students a lesson in lateral thinking during a Chapel time gathering in the most appealing Chantry, persuading us that the newly born daughter of a member of staff really could be a ' good man '. I experienced a variety of teaching methods in his form as I was obliged to toil up the pole [ a real one this time ] in his classroom and attest the Judaistic authenticity of the Almighty's son: ' Jesus was born in a Jewish stable, under a Jewish sky ....... ' I also learnt that stating the obvious is frequently necessary with young people. Christmas Spirit was Hubert's acronym for academic success. Much of it I fear I left behind but for many years I reminded the young ad nauseam that ' Industry gains it reward at examination time '.
In Middle Part 2, now established as one of the not-so-bright fraternity, I was also idle and difficult, ' uncommonly cheeky ' as a senior student in our house described me. I entered the lists with Marcus Hampton, a formidable figure [ as well as a considerable scholar ]from a slightly earlier age. The battle was tough and protracted; I was resilient but he much more so. As I slid reluctantly into submission I was left feeling that, while classroom life may perhaps be easier for the teacher who has a range of battlefield tactics, just occasionally a fearful concern by young people about the consequences of their actions may be no bad thing.
A somewhat different and certainly more modern approach was certainly employed by John Manisty, Housemaster for most of my dissolute years. One would have expected a man who had spent most of the war at the heart of top secret decoding work in Bletchley Park [ and even there assuming absolute responsibility for rail travel ] to remain as calm as he did but, in a surprising way, ' Fred ' exuded a quiet warmth as well. One of his real strengths lay in his end of term reports, a model for any pastoral chief to this day. What parents received was a poignant summary that was always direct, generous, reasonable and, even for a wastrel, tinged with hope.
When John Manisty was succeeded by Peter Partner and I had somehow inexplicably risen to a position of responsibility in the house, I began to appreciate the need for administrative structure. I failed to resist the urge to go into the Housemaster's study at 5.30am to order his papers and prioritise the contents of his desk. Peter was a man full of humour as well as scholarship and he wasn't short of the milk of human kindness either. Interviewing prospective housemasters many years later, I suggested they would be dong well with the most senior student members of their houses if the letter wanted to spend most of the summer holidays in their company, as I had done in my last year with the Partner family in a villa outside Rome.
Grahame Drew, in addition to his artistic skills, provided an example of a thoroughly nice man who was not afraid to go his own, sometimes peculiar, way. His expressions of generosity, that were neither deserved nor expected any thanks, were unusual at that time. In 1963 I watched most of the Test series against the West Indies, including Colin Cowdrey batting with a broken arm, at his house when I should have been doing other things.
We all wanted to visit Anthony Wood's house for a different sort of diversion. His family boasted, in an exclusively male and largely monastic community, the most eligible au pair girl to be found on Kingsgate Street. Tony wrote exceptionally good text books for ordinary A Level historians like myself but it was his modesty that I particularly remember. We were on a visit to Normandy in 1964, taking in both the beaches and the Bayeux Tapestry. I vividly remember Tony, an early arrival on those beaches in 1944, saying in a completely matter of fact way as we wandered down a country lane ' I think this was the ditch I jumped into when German soldiers appeared, firing at us '. We still have much to learn from the self-effacement of that wartime generation.
In my latter years most of my positively spent time was consumed in athletics and the Combined Cadet Force. I therefore saw a good deal of John Hunter Durran. In him was life, even if it wasn't quite the variety to which the fourth gospel writer referred. Dealing with unpredictable adult behaviour is a formative experience for young people and Hunter D, emerging from nowhere on CCF camp, brandishing and indeed firing a large pistol above his head, was an example which it would be difficult to better.
In, for me, the dizzy heights of the form or class known as Senior Part 2 I marvelled at Ronnie Hamilton, that most stylish and consummate performer, with his immaculate dress sense and with us tapping our fingers on our Victorian desks in admiring approval. He was at his best in the Masque [ a home spun history of the School ] in 1961. You could sense him believing every word of the marvellous lyrics when, hobby-horse in lively action and in the role of former Headmaster, Dr Burton, referring to his ' beloved ' Commoners [ as opposed to Scholars ] he sang ' I found them more congenial; the College men so menial '. At that moment, if not before, I realised that all teachers are actors.
But that doesn't prevent them from having integrity. I regarded John Gammell as a giant in every way and especially for the value of his honesty. This quality could have surprising manifestations. I remember discussing with ' Gam ' in his study a somewhat humdrum essay I had produced on racial discrimination [ quite advanced for 1965! ]. I did not know where to put myself when he suggested I ought to consider the theory that antipathetic views towards certain people might be linked to the supposed generosity of their physical endowment.
Without doubt I benefited from my dealings with the man at the top, Desmond Lee. I quite a few run-ins with him as Headmaster; one of us was wise and one was foolish -- and there are no prizes for guessing who was which. He was not just merciful with a poacher, turned gamekeeper, turned poacher, he gave real responsibility where he saw a glimmer of talent. In 1965 [ as in 2020 perchance ] Winchester was on the threshold of a revolution in sport; Geoffrey Dyson, a controversial national athletics figure, was consulted and then employed as a guru. When he first visited the School, Desmond Lee not only gave me the task of hosting him for a whole day and a half, he also handed over the same confidential briefing document that had been issued to certain members of the Common Room. I kept it for a long time as a reminder that the interests of the challenging, energetic student [ or staff member for that matter ] are best served by promoting him or her out of sight.
For various reasons I failed to say good-bye to this rightly respected classical scholar. Almost forty years later I was wandering in the churchyard at Granchester, looking at epitaphs on grave stones, one of my quieter, later life occupations. I stood at the end of an impressive full-size flat stone, looked down and there he was or, rather, the name came up to greet me ' Sir Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee '. I was therefore able to apologise for my many misdemeanours and to say farewell. He was of my father's generation and style; most of us who have followed have been pale imitations.
Finally the person from whom I learnt most at Winchester was Mark Stephenson. In my whole education he was the only teacher or supervisor to give me an alpha [ or A* ] for any piece of work -- an essay in fact on ' King Alfred, just a plodder '. For ever since I have appreciated the value of encouragement.
I used to go to Mark's study in College, the Scholars' boarding house where he was the resident tutor, for tasktimes, the equivalent of a university tutorial, a discussion with no other students present on an essay recently written. These were intentionally challenging occasions, academically of course but, I recall, once personally as well. Mark gave me an apple, a generous gesture but I realised as it was largely consumed that there was no receptacle into which I could place core and stalk. As Mark watched me, I suspected this might be something of a test and I decided, without blinking or blanching, to swallow it all. I think he approved of this.
Thirty years later I was attending a summer holiday charity tennis tournament at Gordonstoun. A Head does not always hit it off perfectly with his predecessor, especially if the latter had been an iconic figure and brilliant at everything, which mine certainly had. There was a slight stiffness in the air therefore as we met at the ice cream counter and exchanged a few pleasantries about not very much. I took a substantial mouthful of my cornet and, only having done so, did I realise that I had admitted into my mouth an expeditionary and now rather angry wasp. What to do? I was cornered, knowing that either a sudden oral ejection or a rapid disappearance to the bushes could be interpreted as a sign of discourtesy and weakness. I therefore decided simply to munch away, talking all the while, the roof of my mouth considerably stung, my taste buds in disarray and my throat fearing the wasp's continuing effectiveness.
At that moment I came of age as a Head and quietly thanked Mark Stephenson for preparing me for this challenge and for teaching me that the only real lesson you need to learn is, whatever the adversity, just smile and carry on.
5th March 2020
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