King Henry VIII Grammar School

Re reading through some of the posts since I was last on here I note that some of the teachers that I recall from my time (65-70) seem not to get a mention. The likes of Frank Liddiard, Bart Jenkins and Bob Griffiths all great teachers in my book. The posts of Doddman have been immensely interesting. Noting his relocation to Canada I wonder how he has found the dual language situation. My wife and I were visiting some of her family in Ontario - Trenton, Hamilton and Ingersol - which we travelled to from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick via Montreal where we found the French speakers to be most ignorant. Anyway best wishes to you, you have entertained me for a good hour

Hello DW, Hi all Maybe the issue with French speakers is a deep seated resentment that the western world adopted English as the language of commerce. It was a close call, I believe, with only fifty years of history at a crucial time, where a thrown dice might have dictated the commercial language stance, where French could have been the dominant language. During a family child culture exchange in the seventies, we in our home accommodated a French school boy, who had relatives living in Quebec. We met his parents, half came from Brittany & half were Francs. The roots of the mistrust may go back to this partition on the French mainland, which was a subject discussed by the French parents. Sometimes it is easier or more convenient to blame a foreigner rather than a cultural division back home. I wish that I understood it!

DW - that corresponds with my years at the senior school ~ my initials are SB and I went to the junior school too. I was in 2alpha, 3C, 4C, LVC, UVC, 61A

Hello DW and SB and everyone else, These dates also correspond to my time at KH, I started in 2 Alpha in 65 under jack Wrench and also went the 3C to 62B route in 1972. I must have known you both and I think DW that I used to see you occasionally down at the Memorial Park on a Sunday afternoon? This forum has really brought back memories , mostly good ones and looking back I enjoyed my time at KH and the teachers, despite their (now) questionable tactics, certainly dragged out the achiever in me. I completed my attendance with a trip organised by the Droob to see the Munich olympics, all the way there and back in his dodgy Landrover! We were also moved on in the middle of the night from a farmers field in which we were camping, by armed police. We were right next to Furstenfeldbruk Airfield where the fire fight took place with the terrorists who captured the Israeli athletes!! Pete Carey was also with us and his wife was in the UK team for the 1500 m (I dont remember if Pete was a teacher at KH?) PM me if you wish.

I thought DW might be Doug Walters, and Al M brings Al MacTaggart to mind, or Al Musk. I was in Hollands house and had ginger hair.

Got this from my cousin Gareth Simpson KH 1970-76

Blimey!!! I'm surprised those hair styles where allowed at King Henry VIII.

Hi Artful I received detention & note to my parents for having a 'crew-cut', which was made worse as I joined the fashion of wearing junior school caps. My era was fifteen years prior to that photo.

I left KHVIII in 1974 taking with me the (dubious) honour of having the longest hair in the school!! H Walker had already told me that I wasn't fit to represent the school at university which didn't bother me in the slightest as I didn't want to go anyway. 'Bunny' Burrows had previously asked me what ambitions I had after leaving school. Hearing my answer of 'get a job where I don't have to have a haircut,' and 'ride a motorbike at 100mph' he gave up on me with immediate effect!!

Thinking back to my childhood and school days from 1946/56. My dad used to cut our hair - short back and sides with no frills. I couldn't wait to be old enough to get a paper round and pay for my first visit to a barber's shop.

I well remember ze vog twisting my hair and saying "I blewed my vistle all over ze playground boy" to which I laughed and had a clip round the ear. Really sorry that he ended up in such circumstances - he lived in a lovely Victorian house at the bottom of Spencer Avenue with his wife. Pip Squeak used to take us for Greek up in the old dormitories. He had absolutely no control and the p**s was taken. There was a Latin master we called Nero. I remember him slapping a boy who responded with the words "who the bloody hell do you think you are?" Then there was Piggy Shore, deputy head, Slug - biology, no idea what their real names were. Phil Hunt

Slug Hughes?

That's him. David 'Slug' Hughes was a strange man in some ways. He came over as your friendly uncle most of the time, but I remember he took a dislike to a couple of lads and gave them a hard time at every opportunity. He was an awful teacher. He knew his stuff, but was easily sidetracked and wasted many lessons rambling on about irrelevant things, usually to do with his great hobby, photography. He was hopeless at controlling lessons, especially practical ones where all sorts of things were going on. In one such lesson a few of us undertook a challenge to cook breakfast in the lab. Hughes was a Quaker, and one of several teachers who lived in or around Maidavale Crescent in Styvechale. He lived opposite Alfie Crocker, I believe. He was a lifelong bachelor and lived alone with quite an eccentric lifestyle, apparently.

Then there was Herbert Walker the headmaster or herb or the beak. It must have been around 1959 during assembly when he announced "yesterday I beat a boy for smoking in the bogs", he didn't use the word bog.

Occasionally, by implication, favourable comparisons are made for Walker, against his predecessor, Burton. Walker was not a "distinguished linguist" (as claimed). he had been a war civil servant . He was fitted for this. Once in education, a troublesome piety appeared and The Cathedral visited us regularly! Burton was a scholar in an old fashioned way. He was a swashbuckling non-conformist who set high standards culturally but didn't give a damn for the bilious dispositions of the shocked conforming boys and masters. Walker arrived in my final year. I suddenly discovered the meaning of "haberdasher's assistant" as he droned from the pulpit. I was (mistakenly) a prefect. Two boys in "my" form, the bottom fifth, broke into a newsagent. One boy was a neighbour. This alerted the sublimated detective in Walker who passed on his insights to the police I could have been the Master Mind, being older! No one actually accused me. I was never taken to court. Instead, the rumour spread among the select hirelings in gassy whispers. A testimonial to an Oxford college was retracted. In doing so, it gave me the break of my life. I went to Leeds, read English in the best school of the subject of the time, and rejoiced in being away from the old one horse town. A little later, looking through my file in the Army, I saw Walker's "reference" for me to Leeds. It had that sanctimonious "sorrow, not anger" Anglican tone. It was so hintingly unenthusiastic about my "temperament" (Walker had known me a few months), Leeds must have accepted me out of rabid curiosity. (It even mentioned,without comment, my playing jazz on THE SAXOPHONE!) I've never looked back. He did me a favour. As for the educational standards Walker is supposed to have raised, they were far higher under Burton, if among a more selective group. It certainly taught me to distrust institutions. One year end, my report was creepily recommending me as someone who "will adorn any profession he cares to enter". The next year, 1951, I was gallows meat. For all this, I am grateful still for the healthy lack of cant in the Burton years... and, of course, for the ghastliness of the homilies of Herbert! And I still play jazz.