Few teachers these days give their lives completely to one school, but one who did was my former history master John King, who has died aged 84. When he retired from St Bartholomew’s school in Newbury, Berkshire, in 2012, he had taught there for 48 years and had never taken a day off sick. He was awarded the British Empire Medal for his dedication.
John started at the school when it was a boys’ grammar; it later became a co-educational comprehensive, one with a larger sixth form than Eton college at the other end of the county. In the history department he was able to make his subject both vivid and challenging to generations of pupils, among them the future historian Lucy Worsley, and he helped many of us to get into leading universities.
He also taught British and American politics and ethics, coached rugby, football and cricket teams, helped with school plays and concerts, and was involved with the RAF contingent of the school’s cadet force for many years, including in its training for the annual Ten Tors race across Dartmoor in Devon. In many ways the school was his life, for he never married and he lived only a short distance beyond the playing fields.
Born in Feltham, Middlesex, John was the son of George, a vicar, and his wife, Gladys (nee Bowell), and one of six children, including his twin brother, Joe. His father served in parishes in Feltham, Newbury and Grazeley, near Reading: the first appointment leading to John’s lifelong affiliation with Middlesex county cricket club and his status as a season ticket holder at Arsenal, both due to his admiration for the postwar sporting idols Denis and Leslie Compton, who played for both teams.
John was educated at Reading school and studied history at Manchester University before gaining a master’s degree at the University of Florida, where he helped set up a cricket team and, equally characteristically, insisted that it should be multi-racial, no mean feat in the segregated south of the early 1960s. John’s time in the US made a huge impression on him and led to a subsequent interest in American politics and sport.
On his return to the UK he joined St Bartholomew’s as a master in charge of the school’s small boarding house in 1964, becoming a house master after the facility was closed down. Beyond the school he served for many years as a governor at a nearby village primary, chairman of a local cricket club and as a church warden.
After his retirement he suffered from ill health, including the neurological disease Guillain-Barré syndrome, but faced the resultant challenges with optimism and stoicism, and remained welcoming to former colleagues and pupils. He was still fascinated by British and American politics and was alertly reading Hansard until a couple of days before his death.
John is survived by his sister Margaret and brother Chris.
