| Donald Nicholl - Heath's Finest Scholar? |
| "A contribution to the Newsletter from someone in his mid-80's should contain a bit more than purely nostalgic reminiscences because, sadly, there will probably be a shortage of people to whom those reminiscences mean much. I hope that what follows meets that condition.
I recently found myself listening to a group of friends, all Old Boys of the same school over roughly a generation, discussing who had been the school's outstanding scholar of that generation. They started by proposing a variety of contenders but, rather to my surprise, finally agreed on one. The incident made me wonder what the answer would have been if a group of HOBs had set out to identify the school's outstanding scholar of the 20th Century. It seemed like a topic which might spark some views in the Newsletter. I must clearly put up my own candidate and so I propose Donald Nicholl who was an exact contemporary of mine from 34-41. I shared a desk with him: I acted in 3 plays with him: I "farmed for victory" with him in the dark days of 40/41. I wish that more of his talent had rubbed off on me!! In support of my candidate I offer the following extracts from the obituary which appeared in the Times when he died. "Prophetic" is not a word that should be casually used but there was a sense in which it applied to Donald Nicholl. There was something about the depth and incisiveness of his insight into human affairs, and about the scope and maturity of his moral and religious convictions, which lent his utterances a rare authority for our own times. There was in him a combination of qualities - intellectual and imaginative, affective but critical - that somehow contrived to make an impression of a quite exceptional mind and character... At school he displayed intellectual qualities that could not be hidden. When the masters at his grammar school decided that he would do best by specialising in history, he promptly won a Brackenbury Scholarship to Balliol... A student of Richard Southern's at Oxford in 1946 he initially seemed set to become a medievalist (it was typical of him that, having made that decision, he resolved that, to understand medieval Britain, he would need to be familiar not just with Latin but with Irish and Welsh as well. After four years teaching in Edinburgh he became a lecturer in history at Keele staying in Staffordshire for 20 years, being appointed a Reader in 1970 and receiving a personal Chair in 1972. His interests, however, could not be confined to the Middle Ages. He was fascinated by the urgent intellectual and spiritual issues of our own time. In the 1950s he travelled widely in France and Germany, making contact with many of the leading Catholic thinkers of the day... In 1974 he was appointed by the University of California to be Professor of History and Religious Studies. Here his informed and arresting teaching methods found full scope... In 1981 he was chosen to be Director of the Ecumenical Institute at Tantur near Jerusalem, an international centre for theological research. By the time of his return to Britain in 1985 he was becoming known as a writer. Holiness (1981) was a classic - deceptively simple, both illuminating and disturbing. He was much in demand as a conductor of Retreats, particularly for Anglican communities.' There is more but I rest my case. If votes could be sent from the hereafter I would be confident of one - the legendary C.O. Mackley who taught history to the 6 th form - when Donald wasn't teaching him!" From Major Donald Entwistle, Heath 1934-41. |
| From John Fletcher [Heath 1936-1943] |
| "A footnote to Donald Entwistle's interesting article on his old chess-mate Donald Nicholl in a recent newsletter. In the mid-sixties I visited Mr Arthur Owen at his home. Mr Norman Gain, then living in Liverpool, happened to be staying with him. I mentioned that on a recent visit to London I had encountered Donald Nicholl in Foyle's Bookshop. At which Mr Gain said spontaneously 'The cleverest boy I ever taught!'" |
| Updated: June 2010 |
[ BACK ] |