St Edward's Rhubarb Issue 5

ST EDWARD’S r h u b a r b

43

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.

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

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

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

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