VALETE
Robert’s exuberance and great sense of fun conceal an exceptionally kindly and compassionate heart
the books. Having bought it for a song from the unsuspecting owner, he subsequently sold it for a substantial profit. According to Robert, when he discussed his find in a talk during a recent Modern Languages week his audience was more impressed by how much money it had made than how he had managed to decipher the complicated text. Robert’s exuberance and great sense of fun conceal an exceptionally kindly and compassionate heart. He acts as the eyes and ears of the Chaplain and offers invaluable moral and practical support to colleagues from both the Common Room and the Support Staff in their hour of need. Ecumenical in outlook, he has been responsible for our Muslim community for almost 20 years, liaising with the Imam and attending Jumma prayers every Friday; he is even said to have once refereed the annual Hindu-versus-Muslim soccer match. He has also taken part in numerous charity events, including abseiling from the roof of the old Science Block (‘Just drop from the top: it’s easy when you know how’), gamely tackling an assault course alongside Year 9 boys, and being pelted with soaking sponges whilst immobilised in the stocks. His well-developed histrionic abilities and his penchant for dressing up suggest that he could have had an alternative career on the stage. He wore schoolboy shorts, sweater and cap for charity gymnastics, played a policeman in The Pirates of Penzance and appeared in a staff review as Dame Edna Everage in an outfit containing a fetching feather boa and fishnet tights. Over the years he has given countless talks in assemblies, and his occasional sermons in the chapel are delivered in a style worthy of an Old Testament prophet (‘channelling his inner Jeremiah’, according to one member of the congregation). For more than three decades Robert has brought great lustre to our Common Room with his deep but lightly-worn learning, his sparkling conversation and his sheer joie de vivre . Above all, he is a true dilettante, someone who takes delight in knowledge, not because of its utility, but for its own sake, taking every opportunity to pass it on to the next generation. To have known him as a friend and colleague for all these years has been our great privilege, and we hope that he will continue to walk the Dulwich stage for at least a little while longer before eventually taking his final curtain call.
with drink, and colleagues who dropped in for a brief chat when school ended were greeted either like long-lost friends or Israelites emerging from the wilderness, and invited to stay long enough for a nourishing glass or two of wine or a well- deserved gin and tonic. In the 12 years that he was President of the College Union he gave a sympathetic hearing to boys who wanted to form new societies, however unusual or obscure. Together with his habitual reluctance to prune defunct societies, this openness resulted in the list growing inexorably until, as he himself says, ‘the annual handbook could have been a candidate for the Booker Prize for fiction’. Since stepping down from Head of Department he has been Keeper of the Fellows’ Library, a collection of over 6,000 printed books dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries. His scholarship and his limitless enthusiasm have been evident in the many talks which he has given at all levels of the school, from Geography lessons with Year 7 in which he displayed early atlases and a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, to a seminar with those studying English in the Upper School in which he discussed early editions of Donne and Milton. Recently he has also given Liberal Studies courses to our Upper School pupils and to girls from JAGS, during which he has presented interesting and unusual documents from the College archives. Whatever the subject-matter, or the age of his audience, Robert’s hands-on approach, his inimitable teaching style and his passion for all things antiquarian captivates his listeners and breathes life into topics that could otherwise be dry and dusty. Outside the classroom, Robert has been responsible for many exhibitions, including ones on the College’s early history, on the Chapel, on Ernest Shackleton and on bookbinding (appropriately called ‘Bound to Please’). Most remarkable of all was the display of his personal collection of manuscript cuttings which he has acquired over several decades and which demonstrated his remarkable erudition, honed by many years of study. He has taught himself to read Hebrew and Glagolitic (an ancient Slavic script), accomplishments which paid off handsomely when, while browsing in a second-hand bookshop in Cambridge, he spotted an important manuscript fragment bound into one of
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