KINGSWOOD ASSOCIATION NEWS 2020-21 MEMORIES
MEMORIES I READ WITH GREAT INTEREST THE ARTICLE ON MICHAEL BISHOP IN THE KS NEWS (EDITION 16, JUNE 2020). Bishop taught me Latin and Greek, and his enthusiastic and intelligent approach to language played a foundational role in my going on to have an academic career a theoretical linguist. (I did a Modern Language degree at Oxford, followed by a PhD in Comparative Philology and General Linguistics at Cornell in the States. I then taught Linguistics at Aberdeen for many years, before moving down to Oxford. I am now retired, but continue my academic research active. My most recent book is on teaching language to the deaf in the seventeenth century, a topic which I am sure Bishop would have appreciated and enjoyed. Bishop might alternatively have paved the way to a career on the stage for me, following on my appearance as Cleopatra in his production of Bernard Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra", togged out in a slinky white dress with a slit up the side, and with rolled up rugger socks in the padded bra, fitted (if I remember right) by Mrs Sackett in person. In the following year, I played a walk-on part as a pike-holder in Pirandello's "Henry IV", which only had a single line, but required my lighting up a cigarette on stage, which won me greater fame from my class-mates than did my previous appearance as Cleopatra. However, the groves of academe beckoned more strongly. Michael Bishop was a first-rate teacher, he was enormously and un-pompously talented, and above all he was just a very nice and kind man. I owe him a lot. David Cram (KS 1956-62)
MEMORIES OF MICHAEL BISHOP AMB was my Housemaster and although I didn’t appreciate it at the time he had an enormous influence on my intellectual development. I was truly fortunate in having been taught by Michael Bishop (Latin, at which I did not particularly excel), George Hubbuck (Ancient History) and Alec Dakin (also Ancient History), and was enthused to read Ancient History and Archaeology at university and subsequently pursue a career as an archaeologist. Michael was a truly humane man; erudite, witty, kindly, and with the patience of a saint which we sometimes tested to the limit. When I told him I was an archaeologist at the Middle House Centenary re-union in 1995 he beamed and said ‘what a splendid thing to be’. At the back of my mind I can recall an oft-heard exchange with AMB: AMB (in sonorous tone): ‘What is the purpose of language?’ Boy (who had mumbled: or been imprecise) ‘To communicate, sir’ AMB: ‘Then kindly communicate!' Jonathan Parkhouse (KS 1963-72)
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