THE COMMON ROOM AND STAFF After a year with us, in 'exchange' for Mr Du Croz, Mr R. D. Wilkoff returns to California with our good wishes and thanks. Apart from the excellence of his teaching, we have enjoyed his refreshing humour, his unobtrusive helpfulness, and his tolerance. We hope he has enjoyed his time here; we have certainly been delighted to have him, and he has written for us some of his impressions. From among our more entrenched members we have lost Mr P. M. Nixon and Mr P. G. Wise. We wish them happiness and prosperity, congratulating them on their new appointments and joining in the appreciation of their work that appears in these two articles.
MR P. M. NIXON After thirteen years at St Peter's, Paul Nixon leaves us for the Inspectorate. 'These have been tempestuous years in education in this country, as evidenced by the plethora of Reports, Crowther, Plowden, Donnison, Bullock; by the controversies that have arisen—and not been resolved—about Comprehensive Schools; and by the excessive (?) preoccupation with the organisation of the Schools, sometimes at the expense of the teaching and learning that goes on in them. Paul Nixon seems to me admirably equipped in his scholarship and breadth of educational interest to see that teaching and learning really do go on in our Schools, and I hope that his career here, varied and versatile, touching the life of the School at so many points, will have proved valuable experience to him as an Inspector-to-be. After leaving Oxford, where he read Classics and English, he was a Studio Manager in the External Services of the B.B.C. before joining St Peter's in 1962. He brought to the School, therefore, not only wide scholarship but also an expertise in film, TV and presentation of information. He was appointed Schoolmaster Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge in 1972, and was able to pursue his scholastic research into the signifitance of colour in Chaucer. He has also been on the executive of the National Association of the Teachers of English, and was much in evidence locally and nationally in their meetings and conferences. Teachers are apt to become parochial, but Paul, with his diverse interests and wide general knowledge, has kept his mind versatile and wide-ranging, far beyond subject bounds. I was always ashamed to compare my score in the General Knowledge paper with his astronomical total; and his conversation has always been a refreshment even at the most jaded times of a School term. In his time he has been an unobtrusively essential member of the Rowing fraternity, on the bank a quiet focus of russet visibility, impelling his crews by will power, yet thoughtfully detached from the scene. He has to his credit two remarkable productions of "Six Men of Dorset" and "The Crucible", in both of which the ideas were lucidly emphasised without fuss or ostentatiousness. He has also done much by his steering of our internal G.C.E. examining, both at "0" and "A" levels, in developing the English curriculum so as to ensure that the courses stay within the imaginative scope of the candidates—but this without any dilution of syllabus. 'This has been most significant back-room work. As the Housemaster of the Grove, he has set high standards in the 7
