Postscript: Time and the Aftermath of War

A noticeable side-effect of growing older is the way one's sense of time collapses inwards. Events that seem to have happened relatively recently become talked about by a younger generation as if they were ancient history.

The upcoming 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings may start a trickle of TV documentaries on World War 2. All will doubtless claim to offer new insights, which Saturday's 'Bloody Omaha' on BBC2 certainly did. It followed a standard pattern of running for a hour whether the material needed it or not, and was padded out with the usual narrative repetition, familiar-looking old newsreel footage and colourful comments from two or three photogenic veterans.

It is the current fashion for programmes like this to be fronted by popular celebrities rather than knowledgeable experts. Richard Hammond, clown and professional semi-yob, bless him, hardly brought gravitas to this sombre subject. Instead, it was slightly surreal to hear him discussing the war with a youthful academic for whom the war seemed to be a matter of records and statistics to be interpreted whichever way one chose.

Although I'm not old enough to have experienced WW2 itself, I was born in the aftermath and grew up in a world in which its scars and consequences were all around us. Not just the physical scars of bombsites and material deprivation, but the psychological scars on the adult survivors. So it created a strange kind of deja-vu to hear the war being talked about in a way that seemed so detached from the physical reality itself. It illustrates, maybe, how the prism of historical analysis can rob events of life and context, turning them into neutral abstractions to be manipulated to suit any convenient theory.


The spur to say these things was the email I blogged about yesterday, in which I noted the enthusiastic support of corporal punishment in the schools of my childhood. Perhaps the key to understanding this is to remember the proximity of war. As I suggested at the beginning of this post, a decade or so to an adult is only a short span. Not enough time perhaps to heal hidden signs of trauma. Some of the men who taught me had seen active service and may have slaughtered other men or at least lived in daily fear of being slaughtered themselves. In their own warped thinking, it perhaps seemed right that us boys should learn that life was hard and that they should be the ones to teach us that lesson. Having survived the war, there was perhaps some faith in the Nietzschean apophthegm, "what does not kill me makes me stronger". Hmmm...

The Happiest Days of Whose Life?

In quick succession, I have received another invitation to consider the past. The PTA at my old secondary school wanting to collect memories for a projected book. I'm not the one to ask, I reckon. Anyway, it made me collect my thoughts on the matter, so here's what I wrote in reply:


Thank you for inviting me to contribute to your History of King's School project. Unfortunately, I am not the best person to ask as my memories of King's are largely memories of five years of misery. Excuse me if I explain why.

The boys who were my fellow pupils were all full of ideas, energy and enthusiasm. The late 50s and early 60s were a time when we were all drunk with the idea that we could build a new world for ourselves. Not only were we discovering the attractions of the opposite sex, we would spend our free time walking and talking about new and radical thinking. It was through swapping and trading stuff in the quad that I got hold of my first copies of Ginsberg and Kerouac, that I learned about Angry Young Men such as Pinter and Osborne, that I got second-hand 45s by obscure American bands. It was only the sharing of ideas by so many like-minded spirits that made school anything more than a repressive grind.

To be fair, there were clubs and societies that were worth joining, a Chess Club, Music Society, Boxing. The CCF allowed us to don ex-WW2 uniforms and re-enact in our heads our fathers' wartime experiences. We let ourselves be bullied by NCOs in the name of discipline and spent field-days crawling around in the undergrowth of Sherwood Forest or Belton Park.

The counter-point to this was the unforgivably harsh culture of corporal punishment, particularly when it was allowed to be administered by senior boys, some of whom clearly took a sadistic delight in administering or observing it. The process went completely unmonitored and ignored by staff. Maybe I was unfortunate in being assigned to Newton House. Experience showed it to be a house that cherished its sporting achievements, something that I lacked the competitive drive to excel in. Had I done so, it would have offset some of the "stars" that some teachers liked to regularly set against my name. Stars meant "lack of effort" and resulted in being summoned to appear equally regularly before the House Prefects to be beaten, or "codded" with a gym shoe.

All this happened, of course, under the headmastership of Mr Huggins, whose memory some people seem to revere. I believe things improved under Mr Goodban, who came in too late to be of any benefit to me. Indeed, I left the school as soon as I could, after gaining my O Levels at sixteen. As someone whose interests were artistic rather than academic or sporting, the school had no more interest in keeping me on than I had in staying. Careers advice consisted of trying to persuade people like me to join the local civil service, that is, become a post office clerk.

Being mechanically minded I drifted into various local garages as a "grease monkey", or apprentice motor mechanic, where I could indulge my passion for fast motorbikes. It was chance discussions with tutors at Grantham College three years later (where I attended engineering classes on day release) that my talent for draughtsmanship was explained to me and I was advised to improve my career prospects through full time study. At least King's had given me the five O Level minimum I needed, so I went to Lincoln Art School to get a couple of A levels and take an Art Foundation Course. From there I went to Sheffield Polytechnic for three years to get my DipAD/BA in Fine Art (Painting) followed by a three year postgraduate scholarship to the Royal College of Art to gain my MA. A circuitous route, perhaps, but at least I got to where I was happiest in the end.

Sorry I can't be more positive about King's but that's how it was for me.