I reply to your letter of 18 December. Well, I will do my best, but it was a very long time ago. I do not know just what will interest the group, so I shall set things in a list: some may seem too trivial.
1) I remember the visit of the Hitler Jugend. They sang. I recall at the time suspecting that they had been sent over as a softening up propaganda move. I have to admit that my strongest memory, being at an all male school, was that the young women were seductively pretty.
2) I was in Mead’s House, now called Paull’s. G C F Mead was unmarried and helped by his sister Miss Mead. He was a good Housemaster, sensitive and understanding of teenage boys. At one stage I rather too frequently came down late for breakfast (“Please Sir I was looking for my back stud”). So he (Tibi Mead), knowing my interest in poetry, ordered me to learn poems by heart and to stand outside his bathroom window and recite while he shaved. He later gave me a still much treasured anthology of verse compiled by him and another master, Rupert C Clift.
3) Cold baths were compulsory each morning.
4) We wore separate collar fixed with front and back studs and tie. Judging by my House photographs we wore grey trousers (striped?) and black (?) jackets.
5) Jacket buttons: a very important matter. The more senior you were the more buttons you could leave undone. Prefects (Praeposters) wore open jackets.
6) Mr Mead felt that I would not pass my School Certificate in Classics (including Latin and Greek), so put me in the Science stream. This was a social drop, a demotion. All the posh people did Classics. In fact it was a great success. Inspired by the teaching of Physical Geography by R J Evans I developed an enthusiasm for Geology and have had an immensely enjoyable career, fascinating research, enjoyable teaching, working all over the world and meeting many wonderful colleagues in diverse countries.
7) As a matter of interest, three boys from Mead’s House went on to have internationally distinguished careers as Geologists: R G C Bathurst, H G Reading 1937 – 42 and W H C Ramsbottom 1940 – 44.
8) Regarding initiation customs, we had the impression when I was in Mead’s House that the more brutal of these had recently been stopped (possibly Mead’s influence). New boys were simply required to take part in “New man’s singing” they had to stand up in public and sing a song.
9) Favourite music was the songs of Dianna Durbin (spelling?)