St Edward's Rhubarb - 2018

ST EDWARD’S r h u b a r b

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Adrian Saunders (1958-2017) maths retake. How could a student be expected to deliver answers to a science paper when the rubric wasn’t crafted in ancient Greek? It was duly translated, the pedantic prose crafted to flow in an immaculate iambic pentameter, and how much more beautiful and useful it now was. On 3rd June 2017, Adrian Christopher Stuart Saunders (Teacher of Classics and History, 1986–1990). The following obituary, written by Sacha Tomes (C, 1983- 1988), was sent to us by Adrian’s sister: There was always a cigarette, sometimes even two. It was never a delicate act but a deliberate vice; a deep inhalation, sucking the very life out of them, and them ultimately

finest. And like his life, his bar bill knew no natural boundaries. It was always active and frequently in debt as he gave to others much more than he could ever possibly afford. He was English to the core, and yet even though his life was always one of steeples, gowns and incense he ultimately found no solace in a land where religion had become nothing more than hollowed out churches, with only a meagre congregation starved of all but the scantest blue-rinse. The beauty and sincerity of Jerusalem was not enough to hold him, and he sought his religion elsewhere; his mind needed to be challenged, but also at rest, and he found this with the complex calligraphic beauty of the east. Here were stories to challenge the greatest that Christendom ever had to offer; the menacing harems of the Ottomans, the conquests of the Seljuck Sultans, the collapse of Coptic Christianity; and all the while surrounded by the mysteries of the Pharaohs. He was always reading, and as such there were books, thousands of books, unhelpfully heavy and always in the wrong place, collected over a lifetime of searching in shops that most of us would never know and far less have the opportunity to visit. A classical library in Cairo that belonged in Turkey was just one of the worldly problems that followed his mind around the geography of the ancient world. Of course, they were never written to be easily understood by the modern mind; his grasp of language covered Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Turkish, Anglo- Saxon and Coptic. Most, his many friends would wryly observe, were of little use when trying to fix a cistern in Devon. And it was Devon he always came back to, because that was where, ultimately, his family whom he loved more than anything, still were. His trips became more frequent, but never long enough for those of us still here. His life in Turkey had become complete and it was there that he found his peace. He left life as he had lived it, shrouded in the texts of a different age, and within them was carried down the steps of the Isa Bey mosque in Selcuk. He was placed in the ground with great gentleness, and will now be forever on the road to Ephesus. From his grave one can see the Seven Sleepers and Mt Pion. We loved him so much but as he told us, the old Gods pass, and our time must be with the living.

O B I T U A R I E S

Except that not everyone saw the same beauty. And this was perhaps his greatest sadness, and like a drug that never quite satisfies, he always strove to escape from the triviality of life, even though he loved its excesses and its extremes. He needed to be loved, even adored, and perhaps most of all, understood. He would hold court surrounded by those who held the moment with him. They were often his students; the younger and fresher a mind the better, but woe betide those who could not keep up. His quizzical look was the first sure sign that all was not well; ultimately all it would take was a dismissive shake of the head and an imperious tut to the heavens and his court would be changed. Not understanding was allowed; not keeping up was the greatest failure of all. It was the Dragon School where he developed his love of teaching. It suited him well; a preparatory school with a public school common room, housed within the city of Oxford, where he always somehow felt at home. It was here he met many of his eclectic friends, and between them they taught some of the children from the finest families England had to give. Private tutorship for the aristocracy meant holidays spent in Italian luxury; anything that reminded him of a golden age. His move to St Edward’s cemented his love hate relationship with Oxford. As with everything he did, he threw himself into school life; one day he would be found wearing his CCF officer’s pips as one of Her Majesty’s most uninformed, unlikely and unkempt officers, another preparing his brightest for Oxbridge, and always, always, trying to impart knowledge to those in whom he knew it would germinate and grow. His theatrical and thespian outputs grew as he sang, acted and directed his students to ever greater success; although to this day no one can recall if he ever refereed a single game. His humour followed him everywhere and he was as happy writing and directing Who Stole the Tarts as he was with Shakespeare or Aristophanes’

out of him. Every cigarette had a story, a narrative, or a history that he waved in his hands using them as a baton in his orchestra as it played out the chronicles of time. Once they had delivered that momentary high they would be bent over and crushed, a deliberate smothering; there was no time for idle chatter and a slow burning light, time needed to be made for more, as intense as before, and it needed to be now. His imagination lived in a different age, most alive when with the Ancients and Greats. His intellectual dexterity, that was ultimately rewarded with an Open Scholarship in Literae Humaniores to Brasenose College, Oxford, was perhaps first evident when sitting his 5th ‘O’ level

Adrian Saunders