Reconnecting with the school after 60 years
By John Simmons
“Only connect” - I always say it’s my mantra for life. It’s the epigraph of EM Forster’s novel Howards End and 35 years ago I used it as the first in a series of literary quotations on Waterstone’s carrier bags. Now we’re more likely to think of a fiendishly clever quiz programme on TV.
It’s the book connections that appeal to me here. After all, I’m a writer and a reader. My love for these two related activities goes back more than sixty years to my time at William Ellis. Clearly this is a long story…
In the spring of 2025 I got a call from my cousin Will Durham who told me he had got a new job as Director of the William Ellis Trust. Wow. Only connect. I talked to Will about my time at William Ellis from 1959 till 1966, when I’d gained a place to read English at Wadham College, Oxford. My fondest memories were of my A-level teachers at that time – Mr Barker for Latin, Mr Morgan for French and Mr Browne for English. Paddy Browne in particular had been an inspiration.
Some months later Will invited me to an evening at William Ellis for current parents and friends of the school. The speaker was to be Alastair Campbell, which sounded interesting to me. I turned up that evening, walking into the building for the first time in sixty years. A long time but no one had invited me before; life and a career had happened in between.
I enjoyed the evening. Alastair Campbell was interesting, particularly when half a dozen current students from the school interviewed him. I liked their intelligence and I admired Alastair’s respect for them. I bought a copy of his book that night, and felt prodded (in a good way) by the title But what can I do?
This got me thinking; it’s such a good and important question. Why had I not connected with the school for all those years? The more I thought about it, the more I realised that my career as a writer owed everything to my teachers at William Ellis, particularly my English teachers who had instilled in me such a lifelong love of literature. What about today’s students? Only connect.
I arranged to have a conversation with Will. I asked about the school library, explaining that in the lower sixth my English teachers had inspired me by setting aside the A-level curriculum for the first term to give a reading list of world literature: Homer, Dostoyevski, Dante on that list. To be honest, I’m not sure if I read all the dozen books on the list but the very suggestion, the ambitious belief of it, opened up a wider world of reading. And it also suggested that books, from all these different cultures, countries and centuries, were the way to understand the world better. I believe this broadening of my reading horizons led to me winning a scholarship at Oxford.
Could I do something similar for today’s students? I told Will that I would be happy to make a £500 donation to the school library. Soon I was invited in to meet Veronika Seifert, the school librarian. We had a good conversation after which I scaled back my self-indulgent list of classics and agreed that our aim was to encourage more reading by students of every level. The books to be bought from my donation would be decided by the students and teachers, and I was very happy with that.
Veronika then surprised me by saying it would be valuable if I were to come into the school and read to a group of students. There was great benefit in the students meeting and listening to a writer read from a book that might inspire further reading. We narrowed our choice to Philip Pullman whose books I loved and knew resonated with those in the school’s age range.
So it was that on a dark, dreary day of December I walked into the school again to read from Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. I’d been lucky enough to have met Philip a few times and to have been inspired by his concept of the daemons, these external manifestations of inner selves in the form of animals. I read extracts from Chapter 1 to a group of 25, delighted that at least half a dozen of the students knew the book already. I hope that the remaining students will have been intrigued enough by what they heard to now borrow and read the book from the school library.
I had answered Alastair Campbell’s question “What can I do?” It became personal for me. I talked to the students about writing being what I most enjoy doing – and to give the pleasure of reading to others. I have just had my fourth novel Painting Paris published, as well as poetry books including Berliners. These, later in my long writing career, were made possible by having earnt a living as a copywriter in the business world – the principles of good writing apply in all genres. But, only connect again, none of that would have happened without my William Ellis English teachers inspiring and encouraging me back in the 1960s.
So, my donation is to recognise and give thanks to those in the past, to appreciate the present teachers, and to show my belief that William Ellis students will help create a better world in the future. I’m sure that books (in whatever form) will play a leading role in that world.
If you would like to read John Simmons’ books, you can order his latest from your local bookshop (or library). Or you can buy direct from the publishers:
Painting Paris (fiction) from
https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/painting-paris
Berliners (poetry) from
https://paekakarikipress.com/?content=publications.php
