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ST EDWARD’S
r
h
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b
a
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b
most shambolic looking man I
have ever seen, a man of whom
any tailor would despair. He
was vain in as much as he was
very conscious of his brilliance
and his capacity to affect other
people nor was he slow to
take credit when he thought
it was due to him. Winston
Churchill regularly reminded his
butler that he was a great man.
Stephen, though not in so many
words, regularly reminded me.
I do not wholly share the view,
held by most of those I spoke
to at the service yesterday, that
Stephen ‘saved Rossall’. At the
very first governors’ meeting
of his predecessor, Tim Wilbur,
the governors had discussed
a mechanism for closing the
school down and Tim had faced
them down, defended the
position and held on. Six years
later Rossall was still trading and
in a position to step forward.
Stephen did hold off the bank in
2008 when they threatened to
call in all outstanding loans and
he saved Rossall on that day,
but that was a result of a spasm
caused by the world financial
markets, not a leadership
vacuum that he claimed he
inherited. Rossall owes Tim
Wilbur a great deal more than it
remembers to. Yet, having said
that, Stephen undoubtedly was
a great man and Rossall was
astonishingly lucky to have him,
as had been Uppingham.
Uppingham is a beautifully
proportioned small market town
of honey-coloured limestone
houses near Leicester (be still
my beating heart!). Its school
is one of the greats, founded
during the reign of Elizabeth
1; its great visionary was the
Victorian headmaster, Edward
Thring, whom Stephen quoted
or referred to constantly. A new
biography of Thring by Nigel
Richardson is being published
this month and it’s on my
Christmas wish list - although
I won’t have the patience
to wait that long. Stephen
became headmaster there in
the mid-1990s and, during the
15 odd years of his headship,
the school grew significantly
in size and established itself
as unquestionably one of the
greatest co-educational boarding
schools in England. Their choir!
Goodness me, what a choir!
There were great hymns sung,
as you would imagine, anthems
too, and a series of tributes
from old friends, colleagues
and family. Stephen’s sons, Leo
and Mungo, are schoolmasters,
Leo being head of St Peter’s
York. He spoke beautifully
of his father’s contradictions:
“his absence, yet his presence”
for example, and other such
oppositions. And it was lovely
to see Imogen and Bella and to
hear them singing too.
I will remember Stephen
most vividly as follows. It was
a cool summer’s evening and
we were to dine out a couple
of teachers who were leaving
or retiring. These are fun
occasions - LWC does them
brilliantly I think; better than
any other school I know. But in
the year in question a member
of the geography department
was retiring after 45 years of
continuous service. He had
been a housemaster and head
of department and he had run
the hockey too, years before;
but these duties were too long
ago for any of the current staff
to remember and he was not
the sort of man around whom
anecdote collected. He was
about as far removed from
Stephen in character as you
could imagine.
As was his right, this fellow
asked Stephen to speak about
him at the dinner. Stephen had
known him for less than a year
and was mightily surprised at
the request. How peculiar. Did
he have no friends? He asked
me for help, for any funny
anecdotes or stories he could
recount. I couldn’t help him.
The teacher in question was
a rather serious, rather nice
man, whose wife was charming
and friendly and whose adult
sons I had not met but were
highly thought of as decent
and of good character. He had
asked Stephen to speak out of
deference to him I thought.
As the evening drew on
and the speeches approached,
I looked over at Stephen. He
looked as though he had gone
to sleep. He often looked like
that, even in meetings, before
opening his eyes and asking
a question that would pin
someone wriggling to their
chair. Perhaps he had. When
his moment came, he rose
slowly to his feet and for a few
long seconds he contemplated
the book he was holding in
his hands. It was Herodotus’
Histories
, he told us. He had
taken it out of the library that
afternoon. It was his rather
sardonic opinion that this was
perhaps the first time this book
had been borrowed from the
Rossall library since it had first
been catalogued back in the 4th
century BC.
He made no reference to
the teacher whose long career
he was commending to us.
He simply began, quietly and
authoritatively, to read. The
story was of Croesus, famed
in the ancient world for his
fabulous riches. Croesus, in
an archetypal foreshadowing
of the question asked by the
wicked stepmother in Snow
White, asked the Sibyl “Who is
the happiest man alive?” To his
surprise, he was not named as
the answer to his own question
and that despite his astonishing
wealth and prosperity. What
more could a man want after
all? The Sibyl told him, however,
that the happiest man alive was
one Pelias the Greek. Croesus
had never heard of him but
nonetheless he sent out soldiers
to search the Peloponnese for a
man of this name.
They found him, sure
enough. What was remarkable
about him? Nothing that they
could see. But a truth dawned
on Croesus as he listened to
the head of the guard report
what they had discovered about
Pelias’ life. He had farmed the
family’s land, faithfully and
skilfully, all his life. He had
been beloved of his wife and
honoured of his sons. He had
worshipped the household
gods and cared as much for the
welfare of his herds and flocks
as he had for his other kith and
kin. And that was it.
Stephen finished by thanking
his colleague for a working
life well lived, on behalf of all
who had shared with him the
crumbs of his table. It was the
most exquisite compliment,
and I was so moved by it that
for some hours after I went to
bed I couldn’t sleep. On behalf
of all of us who knew him and
loved Stephen as a colleague
and friend, I wish I could return
the thanks he offered then back
to him now.
It has drawn late now and I
do need to sleep. I have missed
the football. Never mind. The
last time Leicester City had
such a day was in 1978 when
they beat a Liverpool team who
had been previously unbeaten
at Anfield for 85 consecutive
games. If another such ‘red
letter day’ comes up again in
the next 35 years, I will try not
to miss that one. But I have no
regrets.
WOODBRIDGE
– On
16th October 2015, Peter
Woodbridge (C, 1958-1962).
Peter attended University
College, Aberystwyth, from
1963 to 1967. He worked as
Contracts Controller at Baker
Perkins, Peterborough, from
1979.
WOOLLEY
– In 2014, John
Richard Woolley (G, 1939-
1943), grandfather of Jamison
Howard (B, 2002-2004). He
served in the RNVR from 1945
to 1946, before becoming a
Chartered Surveyor and Land
Agent in Leicester.
O B I T U A R I E S