VALETE
Simon Northcote-Green
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W e are all, as people, the confluence of many tributaries, some of our own lives and some of those whose impact is handed down; and also of the things that go well and those that don’t. All have an impact. In all of these, we can see the making of the man. Simon Northcote-Green’s father was a well-respected Midlands headmaster, one of whose pupils was a certain Graham Able, which created a link, along with a joint passion for cricket, between the two in later life. Further back, Simon’s ancestors included the Greswell brothers, noted cricketers who played for both his beloved Somerset and Ceylon. But cricket is a game of action, which can’t always be rushed, and that sense of being patient can be seen in another of Simon’s passions – gardening. Even here, the DNA is strong: Simon is rightly proud of a forebear’s celebrated publication in 1919 of The Coniferous Forests of the Punjab. It was perhaps here, too, that Simon inherited that interest in the world beyond our shore, and he took a teaching post after university in East Africa. Subsequently any visitors to the College from there were readily put at their ease by a friendly ‘hujambo’ from Simon. Writing, sport and school- mastering are all there in his make- up; they are in his blood. Simon read History at Oxford and Reading, but it was while at Oxford that he achieved a form of immortality recorded on p787 of the 1975 edition of Wisden ,
ephemera – a Burma photo, Rossy, Lenin, a camel (always useful for Geography Teacher interviews), a pair of fencing masks complete with a dusty inscription, two cricket balls (one red and one grey), once even a pair of stuffed sparrowhawks that for some reason Jacqui didn’t quite take to. In that room, a pastoral revolution took place and we gradually moved away from the confrontational, detached and hierarchical world that was common to so many schools back then. A great teacher needs a sense of the ridiculous – the ability to laugh at oneself as well as with others. Simon’s infectious giggle was irresistible and the examples are the stuff of legend. One memorable moment was a Head of School’s extended account, in front of the Senior Staff, to the Master about the Southwark Cathedral carol service, an event the speaker hadn’t attended, but needed to describe. Some bit their lips, others gulped water, Simon hid under the table in attempts to stifle the mounting hysteria. When sitting in on the many disciplinary meetings with boys, I have always been struck by what Simon said. It is true that he sometimes went a little far, such as the time when, on autopilot at the end of a long term, he told a boy that his place at the College was in doubt when in fact he had only come in to be reprimanded for minor littering. But overall, he has been spot on – analysing, enquiring, judging and punishing, yet always
where the score card of a University match against Somerset reads: IT Botham c. Northcote- Green b. Stallibrass 2 From Marlborough, where he taught History to a little Martin Geach (who incidentally discovered that his notes came near word for word from a library’s copy of Mastering Modern British History), Simon came to Dulwich to teach English and take up the role of Master i/c Cricket. He soon became President of the Common Room and was an important player in carrying the staff through the upheavals of the mid-1990s. It was here that we first saw his compassion and the skills that would make him a great Deputy Master. From there, he went to Blew House before finally taking up residence in the Deputy Master’s office on the ground floor of the South Block. The poet John Betjeman was a great lover of Parish Churches and in the introduction to his Guide To English Parish Churches , he stressed the importance of the layers that make the beauty of a church. Simon’s office was the same. An ancient Inscription defied the weather of time with Chris Field’s injunction to ‘knock and enter’ at the lychgate. Inside, the heating system didn’t work. A broken radio, like a forlorn harmonium, awaited daily repair for 15 years (although it did finally burst into life in his last weeks at the College, with Soft.FM wafting gently down the corridor as the shelves were gradually cleared). Dynastic memorials sat alongside
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