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
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