No.128
The Trusty Servant
English at Winchester, 1955-1990
Tommy Cookson (I, 55-60; Co Ro, 64-65,
67-72, 74-90; Headmaster, 03-05) recalls
the English Department of the ’50s, ’60s
and ’70s:
The English Department started life
in the early 1950s with two members,
HCA ‘Tom’ Gaunt and Michael
Burchnall. Neither had an English
degree but both were accomplished
writers —Tom as the author of hymns
still sung today and Michael as the
winner of the Oxford University
Prize for an English Poem on a
Sacred Subject, as well as the author
of a body of secular poetry and the
Masque which opened New Hall.
Their department was a bit like the
Habsburg Empire, enormous but
scarcely under their control. They
taught only a part of the A level
and none of the English Language
or Literature syllabuses. These were
left to the div dons on the B ladder
or in what were then Senior and
Middle Part. In 1957, therefore, I was
taught O-level English Literature by
a classicist and, in 1960, most of my
A-level books by a historian.
This odd arrangement had great
virtues. Tom Gaunt drew up a list
of authors and texts considered
suitable for each level of the school
and few left Winchester without
having studied a selection of great
works, whether they were taking
A-level English or not. In those
days, public exams weren’t graded
in the way they are now and entry
to Oxbridge was much easier: exam
teaching was therefore less intense.
Although div dons were not English
specialists they were generally well-
read: the unspoken - and occasionally
spoken - assumption was that ‘any
educated person can teach English’.
Part of the fun of being a div don was
the privilege of teaching Hamlet or
King Lear: John Gammell revelled in
teaching Antony and Cleopatra (‘She’s
not a sex kitten; she’s a sex cat’).
As an article in TS55 put it: ‘The
teaching of English should have its
anarchic side. What matters as much
as anything is the enthusiasm of the
teacher. If he enjoys certain works of
literature, the odds are his boys will.’
If there were few English specialists,
there was certainly plenty of English.
While the rest of the world relaxed,
Wykehamists spent Saturday evenings
writing essays of all kinds – some
requiring reasoned argument, others
creative imagination – which were
returned appreciatively read and
carefully marked. Frequent Chapel
services meant regular exposure to the
language of the Authorised Version;
and an enduring memory of evening
Preces in Hopper’s is John Gammell’s
reading of the poems of GM Hopkins.
My house library was well-stocked
and well-used.
John Thorn’s arrival as Headmaster
in 1968 radically changed both
the English Department and the
performing arts. The advent of
graded exams in the early ‘60s led to
specialist dons teaching specialist sets.
Numbers taking English at A level
and Oxbridge increased. Rigorous
textual analysis, difficult to maintain
in a div setting, became the norm.
Tom Gaunt’s successor, Gordon Pirie,
could reveal Chaucer’s genius simply
by taking you through the opening
lines of the Prologue. But the two-year
A-level course at Winchester also
devoted some time to reading around,
as well as directly teaching, the
syllabus, thus establishing the wider
literary context.
By the mid-1970s the department
had increased from two to seven, its
strength not just in numbers but in
the calibre of its recruits. Ken Grose,
3
former Head of English at Bradford
Grammar School, had produced a
widely-used edition of Hamlet. Jo Bain
brought an encyclopaedic knowledge
of literature and the arts from Stowe.
Trevor Park’s knowledge of medieval
and classical literature could have
overwhelmed but actually inspired
his pupils to the point of discipleship.
Lachlan Mackinnon produced
frequent reviews for the TLS. The
changes also affected the younger
pupils. John Clark, imported from
the Dragon School in Oxford and
Michael Nevin, an Old Wykehamist
who succeeded me as Head of the
Department, brought a range of new
teaching techniques to their divs as
well as encouragement both to read
out of class books suited to their age
group and to participate in the annual
junior play.
And amongst these new specialists,
still, was that original Renaissance
figure, Michael Burchnall, whose talks
to the department on the teaching of
grammar or the poetry of Thomas
Hardy live in the memory – as does a
picture of him sitting between lessons
in Common Room quietly reading
books on Mathematics – or Chinese.
Michael Birchnall