the immense benefit of so many future pupils , he switched from Architecture to English Literature . He enjoyed others ’ views and interests : you might mention a lesser Edwardian novelist – J Meade Falkner for instance – and he would light up and say he ’ d just seen a copy in Hall ’ s Bookshop . To the end he remained open to new pleasures : Fauré ’ s chamber music or an unfulfilled wish to see the Cambridge exhibition of the treasures of ancient Uzbekistan .
Besides his learning , the backdrop to his life was his family and the lovely flat in Tunbridge Wells that it delighted him to tell you was where Thackeray ’ s sister had stayed . The elegant bookshelves lining the corridor he built himself . But sustaining him , especially in his illness , were his wife Louisa and son Thomas : their importance for him would be hard to exaggerate and they were indeed fortunate in each other .
PAUL HARRISON 1953-2022
I think of Paul , who taught English at Sevenoaks from 1979 until his retirement in 2017 , walking towards the station , briefcase , rolled umbrella ; that particular smile as he asks a gentle , courteous question ; the surprising – no , wholly unsurprising – width of his knowledge : and realise how much the school and his friends owe him , someone who shared so generously of his intellect , humour and kindness . Recalling his time in prelapsarian Kabul , writing of India , talking of the garden at Magdalene , his enthusiasm enveloped one . With the arts also : never conservative in his taste he was nonetheless more an admirer of Borromini than Bauhaus , a reason why at Cambridge , and to
As a teacher he ranged from The Tale of Genji to The Winter ’ s Tale , a play ‘ reserved for especially privileged classes ’. He liked to quote Thomas Mann , ‘ Only the exhaustive can be truly interesting ’ – and it is a rare teacher able to embrace both . Education , teaching , were about opening windows to those things that really matter . As he wrote to me : ‘ I ’ ve always been grateful for attending a school where art and music were taken as seriously as anything else : I remember ( one of those “ spots of time ”) listening to some pieces of Debussy piano music one sunny morning in a Sixth Form class , thinking to myself , “ Life can get no better than this : whatever unpleasantnesses may be in the world , this will be there too .”’ As on so many things , how right Paul was .
John Guyatt , Undermaster 1990-2003
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