I was at Beevor’s from Easter 1936, then called Allsop’s or Lopper’s and later English’s, until July 1939, when I went up to Clare, Cambridge, with a scholarship. Mr parents were then refugees from Hitler and had had their German nationality removed due to my father’s anti-Nazi writings. I was therefore stateless when George Riding made me feel welcome at Aldenham on my arrival via Switzerland and France shortly before the end of the Easter Term in 1936 until I left in July 1939. In May 1940 I was then interned as an “enemy alien” from Cambridge for about 5 months. Finally I was released, I believe with Riding’s help, and was employed to teach Modern Languages at Aldenham from about the middle of November 1940 until the end of the Summer Term in 1941. During this time I also acted as Assistant House Tutor of Evens and lived in School House.
I then managed to be accepted as Air Crew for the Air Force, again with Riding’s help, and served as a pilot for the next 4 years or so, finally getting British nationality by naturalisation after the end of the war when I returned to complete my Law degree at Cambridge. Much later when I was a QC at the Bar, I also served as a Governor of the School for about 25 years from about 1961 and was involved with the interviewing and appointment of a number of more recent Headmasters.
Throughout my time at the School as a boy and Assistant Master, George Riding was the dominating influence throughout, and I got to know him extremely well personally, as well as his family. He achieved a great deal for Aldenham. But despite this, and my personal indebtedness to him, I am bound to say that he was extremely unpopular with the staff, the boys, the OA’s and the locals. The only tranche of a Headmaster’s constituents with whom he was generally popular were the parents. I had felt this as a boy, but it became entirely and sometimes embarrassingly clear when I was on the other side of the counter and could see behind the scenes.
I have a long and vivid memory of those times, both generally and also of individual personalities and events. But it would be – and take – far too long to try to write about it here. There was one brief visit from some Hitler Youths in, I think 1937 or early 1938, no doubt organised by Riding, but it made no impact at the time. The main activities connected with the war which I remember was assembling gasmasks in the classrooms in 1938/early 1939, fire fighting and ARP exercises in 1940/1941 and then seeing the blitz on London far away.
Sadly since writing the above Sir Michael Kerr died on 14 April 2002.