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The headmaster of my school was a distant person. He was someone we, as pupils, did not come into contact with very much. At morning assembly he would wear his red academic gown, signifying his doctorate but during the rest of the day, on the infrequent glimpses we had of him he had changed into the black gown of one of his two first degrees, in both Arts and Science. Apart from the morning assemblies boys at the school might have an interview with him before being caned (with ‘the twig’ as it was called).Or you might have to see him to ask him that you did not wish to wear a school blazer on the ground of poverty or some other reason - he usually accepted that (but a school cap was compulsory) - or a desire not to buy a copy of the termly school magazine (price six old pence) because, in my case, my brother was at the school and there was no need to have two copies in the house.
He was evacuated along with the school at the start of the war and I have a very clear recollection of something he said, soon after it began. During one of our foreshortened class sessions, as we shared the school with both the host school and another evacuated school, he appeared in front of our class. I remember it well because he was in an unaccustomed somewhat humble mood. He said that he had distributed a form for us and our parents to complete and that since it asked us for our religion a number of boys and their parents had objected. It was nothing to do with the school, they’d said,. It was a private matter. The headmaster made a sort of apology, explaining that he had had no intention of interfering with our private lives. ‘It was just’, he said, ‘that if we’d been bombed and you’d been killed, I would have known where to bury you’. This was generally accepted as a valid reason.

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