On 30 November 2016 Andrew climbed into the pulpit in Chapel to address the usual Wednesday morning congregation. Many of us may remember Chapel as being a ritual sprint at around 08.45( minus a few seconds) in the morning. Notwithstanding its relatively new fixture in the diary – it happens now just before lunch – a few, no doubt, will have remained stranded outside the giant wooden doors, enjoying yet another lesson in timekeeping. Perhaps by this point they will already have caught their breath, their enjoyment of this tempered only by the forthcoming reality of a Sargent’ s, or its modern equivalent, something of which so many of us have no less fond memories. The shame was truly theirs, as they were to miss out on a talk delivered by not only one of the newest dons in Common Room, but by a don who had had the benefit of serving as the UK’ s Deputy Ambassador to Indonesia, as Deputy High Commissioner to South Africa, as Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then in two further postings as Ambassador in Kosovo, and finally in Nepal. Perhaps they may have just about heard the words, far removed from the warmth of the huddled benches, and from the sanctuary of central heating on a November’ s midday in Win Coll:“ Gentlemen, you live and learn!” Mr. Andrew Sparkes CMG had spent his early years learning at King Edward’ s School in Birmingham, following which he finished his secondary education at Manchester Grammar, before studying English Literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. As I am sure many of those who currently have the benefit of sharing the classroom with him would testify, his primary aim in life was to be a teacher. A different pathway, however, was to unfold for him first, as the lure of foreign travel was to see him take on an English Teachers’ scheme in Japan. In 1983 he returned to England and joined the Foreign Office, where he would spend the next 32 years, until the classroom was finally to call him back. It is the discursive form of education that Win Coll provides, according to Andrew, which makes the school a rejuvenating place to be a teacher. After his various postings around the world, mostly in the wake of deep conflicts and their resultant
The Wykeham Journal 2016 33