which would be measured in future, not in weeks, but in months.
* The Comber distillery closed down in 1956, before we left.
† It is a car park and supermarket now.
* St Mary’s is referred to in Pevsner’s The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (1958) as ‘the jewel of Somerset’.
† Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), ‘Unity in Diversity’ – from his anthology Oriental Caravan .
C HAPTER 3
Teenage Years and Bedford
W HEN I WAS SENT there in 1952, Bedford School was a rather traditional middle-ranking, boys-only public school with about a thousand pupils. It was divided into what were essentially three separate schools: the Incubator (or ‘Inky’) which took children from 7 to 11; the Lower School, for boys from 11 to 13, and the Upper School, which continued pupils’ education through to 18. Set in the middle of the town of Bedford, the school was said to have existed as a Church school since before the Domesday Book. In 1552 Bedford’s School was issued with letters patent by Edward VI as a Grammar School. But, like so many other similarly founded schools, it raised itself to the status of an independent Public School in the mid-1860s. In my time it was less a forcing ground for achievement than the educational institution of choice for Bedfordshire’s yeoman farmers and its middle classes. In one respect, however, the school’s reach went well beyond the county. It had a strong reputation for educating the sons of military officers and the colonial civil servants who ran the Empire. My father had been sent home from India at the age of eight, to be educated first at a Jesuit college and then at Bedford. Indeed, he went to the same boarding house that I subsequently attended.
The school in the 1950s (no doubt it is very different now) was not particularly famed for its academic prowess (though my year had a fair crop of bright students who went on to glittering careers in academia). Most of its students were at the hearty, rather than brainy, end of the spectrum. Sport was thus a very important part of school life. We had a good rugby team which in my time briefly included Budge Rogers, seven years my senior, who later won many England caps and was acknowledged as one of the best rugby players of his generation.
The River Ouse runs placidly through the middle of the town, providing perfect facilities for rowing which, ahead of cricket, was the major sport of the summer. In all these sports, as well as in athletics and boxing, we played in the usual rounds of independent-school tournaments,whose membership included most of the major public schools of England from Eton downwards.
Although primarily a market and light industrial town (which in the 1950s had become something of a magnet for post-World-War-Two Italian immigrant families), Bedford, the home of John Bunyan, had (and still has) an unusual number of educational facilities. There was Bedford High School * , the female equivalent of Bedford School, a boys’ secondary modern (known as Bedford Modern, and now an independent co-educational school in its own right) and the Dame Alice Harper Girls School, a grammar school for girls. The last two were viewed with a good deal of rather unpleasant snobbish disdain by Bedford School staff and pupils (though this did not stop them regularly beating us at sports). And on top of all that, there was Bedford College, which at the time was one of the nation’s foremost establishments for educating physical training teachers. All this made for quite a sizeable, if not particularly prestigious academic community, as well as a great deal of opportunity for (at the time strictly illicit) fraternisation between the boys and girls of school and college age.
In the manner of public schools at the time, ‘japes’ were regarded as being an essential part of school life, even if formally frowned on. These were pranks which sometimes involved personal danger, but nearly always resulted in damage of
* The Comber distillery closed down in 1956, before we left.
† It is a car park and supermarket now.
* St Mary’s is referred to in Pevsner’s The Buildings of England: South and West Somerset (1958) as ‘the jewel of Somerset’.
† Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), ‘Unity in Diversity’ – from his anthology Oriental Caravan .
C HAPTER 3
Teenage Years and Bedford
W HEN I WAS SENT there in 1952, Bedford School was a rather traditional middle-ranking, boys-only public school with about a thousand pupils. It was divided into what were essentially three separate schools: the Incubator (or ‘Inky’) which took children from 7 to 11; the Lower School, for boys from 11 to 13, and the Upper School, which continued pupils’ education through to 18. Set in the middle of the town of Bedford, the school was said to have existed as a Church school since before the Domesday Book. In 1552 Bedford’s School was issued with letters patent by Edward VI as a Grammar School. But, like so many other similarly founded schools, it raised itself to the status of an independent Public School in the mid-1860s. In my time it was less a forcing ground for achievement than the educational institution of choice for Bedfordshire’s yeoman farmers and its middle classes. In one respect, however, the school’s reach went well beyond the county. It had a strong reputation for educating the sons of military officers and the colonial civil servants who ran the Empire. My father had been sent home from India at the age of eight, to be educated first at a Jesuit college and then at Bedford. Indeed, he went to the same boarding house that I subsequently attended.
The school in the 1950s (no doubt it is very different now) was not particularly famed for its academic prowess (though my year had a fair crop of bright students who went on to glittering careers in academia). Most of its students were at the hearty, rather than brainy, end of the spectrum. Sport was thus a very important part of school life. We had a good rugby team which in my time briefly included Budge Rogers, seven years my senior, who later won many England caps and was acknowledged as one of the best rugby players of his generation.
The River Ouse runs placidly through the middle of the town, providing perfect facilities for rowing which, ahead of cricket, was the major sport of the summer. In all these sports, as well as in athletics and boxing, we played in the usual rounds of independent-school tournaments,whose membership included most of the major public schools of England from Eton downwards.
Although primarily a market and light industrial town (which in the 1950s had become something of a magnet for post-World-War-Two Italian immigrant families), Bedford, the home of John Bunyan, had (and still has) an unusual number of educational facilities. There was Bedford High School * , the female equivalent of Bedford School, a boys’ secondary modern (known as Bedford Modern, and now an independent co-educational school in its own right) and the Dame Alice Harper Girls School, a grammar school for girls. The last two were viewed with a good deal of rather unpleasant snobbish disdain by Bedford School staff and pupils (though this did not stop them regularly beating us at sports). And on top of all that, there was Bedford College, which at the time was one of the nation’s foremost establishments for educating physical training teachers. All this made for quite a sizeable, if not particularly prestigious academic community, as well as a great deal of opportunity for (at the time strictly illicit) fraternisation between the boys and girls of school and college age.
In the manner of public schools at the time, ‘japes’ were regarded as being an essential part of school life, even if formally frowned on. These were pranks which sometimes involved personal danger, but nearly always resulted in damage of
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