FIFTY YEARS LATER. By Richard Wells

I glance at Robert as Mr Ford strides into the classroom.  We don't say a word but I know he's thinking the same as me.  We won't get away with anything with this one.  He's just arrived at the school, the new Head of English - a solid looking man, not tall, but with an undeniable presence.

Elliot, the class joker waits for all of fifteen minutes before putting Mr Ford to the test.  I'm not sure which is his most effective weapon - the look or the barbed response, but Elliot keeps his head below the parapet for the rest of the lesson - no, the rest of the year.

For the first few weeks I find it difficult to find a way in.  I wonder whether English Literature was the right choice for me.  Mr Ford speaks, I listen, but nothing seems to get through.  There's no connection.  I write it all down, I produce the essays, he marks them and I'm unsurprised by my very average marks.

In the second term, he tells us we'll be taking the Satire Option.  Now I know about satire.  That was the Week that Was is a weekly addiction and I'm a regular pretentious purchaser of Private Eye.  My previously small spark of interest bursts into flame.

John Dryden and Alexander Pope are not the easiest starting point, but Mr Ford is in his analytical element.  The discussion spills over into philosophy, religion, politics and, at times, even the meaning of life. As we progress through Swift and Samuel Butler, the scope for extra-curricular discussion widens.  We begin to develop the skills of analysis, argument, counter-argument and carefully-crafted-put-down.  By the time we reach Brave New World and Animal Farm we're in full flow, not the same people we were six months earlier.  Mr Ford is like a conductor, the baton moving imperceptibly.

Fifty years later I'm standing at the lectern, in the crematorium, a poem by Berthold Brecht in front of me - Questions from a Worker Who Reads. I look out across the sea of faces and slowly recite each line.  Four of us ex-pupils have come to pay our respects to Mr Ford, come to give our thanks for his teacher's gifts.  We read from the lectern in turn and Robert tells the audience about Mr Ford's early years, his wartime experiences, his move into teaching, his love of words and language.  there's no vicar, no hymns, no prayers, just people reading and talking and, to close, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. 

Afterwards over tea and cakes we go over our stories, the way we kept the links, the way John and his wife welcomed our visits, the way we all still use his teachings.