Q&A with Hospice Chairman, Simon Lee

JONATHAN SMITH INTERVIEWED BY DAVID WALSH

Jonathan Smith spent most of his teaching career at Tonbridge, from his appointment by Michael McCrum in 1967 until his retirement in 2002. He was at different times Head of English, Head of Humanities, master-in-charge of the Junior Head and producer of many memorable school plays. At the same time, mainly in the holidays and then in retirement, he was also writing novels, radio plays and a best seller about teaching called ‘The Learning Game’. Jonathan’s influence on the academic, cultural and intellectual sides of Tonbridge has been immense and I went in October 2020 to interview him for the school archives. This is an edited version of that interview.

Jonathan, you came from a family of teachers and, after school at Christ College, Brecon and then reading English at St. John’s, Cambridge, you followed the family vocation. The first school at which you taught was Loretto in Scotland and then you came to Tonbridge. Why Tonbridge?

This is a bit of a mystery because Michael McCrum, who appointed me always claimed that I wrote and asked him if he had a job, out of the blue when there wasn’t a job going, that I actually wrote an unsolicited letter to him saying can I come and teach at Tonbridge. He swore this was true. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I would have done. And I don’t know why Tonbridge.

So how would you characterize Tonbridge in the late 60s?

Well of course it was a very interesting and challenging time. (That’s a cliche for “bloody difficult time”) because there was a lot of rumbling social discontent, a lot of stroppiness around. In a way I found it all incredibly exciting and when I look back on my years at Tonbridge, the early years, the late 60s and the early 70s, they were packed with interesting people. I remember Chapel was quite a lively affair. People gave some very radical talks. I felt very challenged by it. Michael McCrum asked me to share the Upper Sixth with him (we had just created a new form called the Upper Sixth) He took one of them, and I took the other, and that was across the curriculum. They were just clever boys. I had fifteen and he had fifteen. I suppose they were Oxbridge types. And I said to him, well, I don’t know what to do. I was terrified. And he said, oh I’m doing Milton and Dante. What are you doing? To somebody coming from a small Scottish school, Tonbridge seemed substantial. I loved the balance between academic life and sporting life. I’ve never been one of those people who thought Tonbridge is all about sport, although I’ve enjoyed the cricket, the rugby and everything. What happened in the classroom mattered to me much more than anything else. And also plays were hugely important. So to be honest, I found a school that I didn’t want to leave.

How do you assess Michael McCrum and his impact on the school?

Well, the first thing to say about all the headmasters I worked with, is that they were very clever men. McCrum, Ogilvie, Everett, Hammond, every one of them. No one in the Common Room could run rings around them, although being very clever is not the only or necessarily the most important thing in a headmaster. It certainly helps, particularly in a school which is quite critical. Lots of academic schools are pretty sharp and critical. Michael McCrum – well, he stood above the Common Room here. He had such a brilliant career and was going to go on to become Headmaster of Eton and Master of Corpus and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge. I mean, that’s a pretty distinguished career in any language. He set the standards very high. He had a great presence around the place. I was quite scared of him to start with - no bad thing maybe. After he retired, we got to know each other much better. I became very fond of him. When he was headmaster, I was slightly in awe of him really. And yet, when it came to his leaving event where we put on a series of sketches for him, a sort of farewell review written by Barry Orchard and myself, I played him. So I was actually Michael McCrum which some people said was the closest I ever got to being a headmaster. I remember him sitting there in the front row during some pretty lively sketches smiling at me and I thought, well, you know he’s pretty good. He’s taking all this on the chin. People who know much more about the school’s history than I do reckon that he changed the school radically, making it a better-known school. Certainly his reputation was one of a very demanding, very clever, very driven man.

These were difficult times in terms of the pupil body, difficult boys, quite a lot of kicking against authority?

Absolutely. I think there is one thing Tonbridge does that I like a great deal. I think it holds steady. In some ways it’s a very conservative school with a strong core of central people who

spent their lives there. I’m thinking of all the housemasters when I was at Tonbridge who were so central. And I think that Tonbridge didn’t get blown around as much as some schools did. At the same time there was a great awareness of individuality and there were teachers on the staff who were very tolerant, very liberal, who got boys through and I suppose that group would have included me. I was very keen to make sure that difficult boys survived. The senior tutor system was a very important part of that area. Barry Orchard was the number one man on that, and I lived in Knox House (now Whitworth) with him when I arrived, so we became very good friends. We were both very bad sleepers, so sometimes we would talk long into the night. Barry was a massive influence on me and of course he was a very loyal and devoted Old Tonbridgian, but he also knew what difficult boys needed and I think one of our aims was to get them through a rocky time. In later life you come to realize that a lot of the ‘difficult boys’ were the most interesting boys, the ones who went on to do something special with their lives. You don’t want pupils to be easy. You want them to be alive. You want them to be demanding, you want them to be challenging.

How did the English Department evolve during your time and how did the teaching of English change?

Well, the Department evolved hugely because when I came in 1967 the English Department didn’t even have a place. There was no such building so you were peripatetic. I had nowhere to leave my stuff. Then eventually in 1968 we got one floor in Dry Hill House. The bottom floor was the sixth form centre. The middle floor became the English department and the top floor was a master’s flat, so the whole department operated first of all from nowhere and secondly from one floor of a small building. English arrived very late in the academic world as a serious subject and the English Department was not traditionally a strong part of any school. Changes were coming all the time and we got bigger and bigger with two floors of Dry Hill House. It sounds rather trivial to mention this, but where you go to work is very important. The atmosphere you create, what your classroom feels like, what your classroom looks like. Eventually we had the whole building and then it became a part of the intellectual world of the school. I had a stream of colleagues who were very clever and when I went into school each day, I always felt that I was going to be picked up by somebody, so I always felt a kind of energy from my colleagues. There is a special slice of subversive feel to English teachers. You know they like to be on the inside track. They like to challenge things. They don’t take things easily, so it’s often quite demanding.

It was not until close to your retirement that the E.M. Forster Theatre was built. What were the difficulties in putting on a play before that?

The plays I put on when I first arrived at Tonbridge were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and The Royal Hunt of the Sun. The problems were absolutely massive if you were trying to do a serious production. You had nowhere to rehearse. Big School had to be booked because it was used for public exams and assemblies. It was a huge logistical challenge putting on a play. On the other hand, and I don’t want to argue for not having a theatre, it did make you very adventurous and very innovative because you had to find ways around it. You had no theatre, you had no space. And that made me feel very driven to do something special. And of course there was a huge acting pool of talent.

Tonbridge cricket. Tell me what you remember particularly of working on the Junior Head with Mike Bushby.

Well, I’d run the cricket at Loretto when I was 22 but cricket was less important there. I was actually thrilled when I took over the 3rds because it was just dead right for me. I found the exact level at which I wanted to take cricket. There were some very good players on the 3rd XI. We played to win. Mike had just the right amount of patience. He was very good with taking individual nets, staying on later than other people. It made me feel quite humble actually that he cared so much for the people who try hard but who don’t find it easy. He had a special sympathy for them. However he wasn’t a great selector. When it came to picking the 3rd XI on Saturday, he wanted to get in these people who had been trying very hard in the nets and I was having to be realistic to say ‘yes, that’s all very well

but he isn’t going to get any runs’.

How did you manage to combine teaching and writing?

I never thought I was a writer until housemasters said to me things like ‘I really like your reports as they often seem to me to ring true of the boy’, so I recognised that I could actually create a portrait. And I like writing letters and people often said that they like my letters. When I am irritable or on edge, I write things down that I really feel very powerfully about, which I didn’t want to talk about. I put them on paper and keep them in the bottom drawer and quite a lot of those built up. And then I got into writing in the early 1970s through Anthony Seldon and Wilfred and Eileen, and I’ve been writing ever since. How did I do it? Well, I did it in the holidays. I had a sort of psychological game I played with myself which was in term time I’d say to myself, ‘Oh, just get to the end of term then you have this lovely chance to write when you’ve had enough of teaching’. And in the holidays, when I was finding the writing difficult, I’d say to myself, ‘Oh, don’t worry, keep going because soon you’ll be back teaching’. So really it was term time I was teaching and nothing else got in my way. And in the holidays, I was writing and obviously I was massively helped by Gillie, who would take the pressure off me as a father and as a husband and let me go and write.

‘The Learning Game’ is the book that probably had the most impact on your fellow schoolmasters.

The Learning Game came from a conversation with Becky, my daughter. She once said to me when I came in at night, ‘You come in, you talk about your day and it’s all so interesting’ and obviously I was saying completely uncensored things at home, I was often letting off steam or whatever, the way that you have to do. And she said, ‘Why don’t you just write it down?’ And I started to write and it all came very easily to me because it was a lifetime of going back to where I started in education. And when I went up to see my publisher, I said I’ve got a new book for you that I’ve finished. We were having lunch and she said, ‘Exciting, exciting, exciting! Tell me it’s a novel, it’s a novel. I can feel it’s a novel’. I said it’s a book about teaching and her face absolutely fell. And she said, Jonathan, you do realize it won’t sell, don’t you? It will go straight down the loo. No one will buy it. And a year later she wrote to me and said it was their surprise bestseller of the year.

Finally, what is your memory of Tonbridge over the fifty plus years you have known it?

I would say the thing that interests me most is what has stayed the same and what has endured. I think a massive amount has endured. I think the school is more open to innovation, but it has held on to some pretty important things very strongly. Unpretentiousness, a belief in doing things properly and thoroughly. You can only have fun with things if you take them seriously. I think it’s a very special school without being up itself.

SAVE THE DATE

Thursday 23 September 145th Annual OT Dinner

Tonbridge School

Saturday 20 November OT Reunion, Leavers of 1973-1984

Tonbridge School

Sunday 5 December Carol Services

Tonbridge School

Throughout the year Tonbridge Spotlights Talks

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While there is uncertainty around mass gatherings taking place, we hope to be able to hold those listed above. Please visit our website to stay up to date with the latest Tonbridge Society events:

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Jonathan Smith’s latest book is Being Betjeman(n), published by Galileo ●

SIMON LEE INTERVIEWED BY REBECCA WATSON

Simon Lee (WH 74-79) talks to OT Magazine about his time at Tonbridge School, his international career and his role as Chair of one the region’s most respected charities. Simon, whose term as Chairman at Hospice in the Weald came to an end in early 2021, also reflects on the mutually beneficial collaboration between the school and the hospice.

with Simon Lee Chair of Hospice in the Weald

Q: When you first arrived at the school, as a young boy, what were your first thoughts and impressions?

A: I knew quite a lot about Tonbridge as a 13-year-old Novi, because I had been at prep school at Hilden Grange where OT Richard Gracey (PS 50-55), was Headmaster, so there was a very close connection between Hilden Grange and Tonbridge and a great many of our activities took place at Tonbridge. The obvious differences were the scale of the school and the houses. I think the house system is one of Tonbridge’s great strengths as it gives everyone a chance to compete in sport at all abilities and levels. I used to go down to the junior rugby fields, as a very average rugby player, and have a wonderful afternoon just taking part.

Q: Who were your favourite teachers when you were a boy here?

A: Mike Bushby was an absolute star and taught me for three or four of the five years I was here. Mike was my form master when I first got here, he was an inspirational teacher of English and History and a great supporter of my cricket. I have a great deal of sympathy for teachers when it comes to report writing, but Mike Bushby wrote in the history section of one of my Novi reports:

“In one lesson a week it is difficult to tell whether a pupil has ability or aptitude in a subject – I suspect Lee has neither.”

I used to pull his leg about that – particularly when he was teaching me A Level history, four years’ later!

It wasn’t just Mike though. The whole ethos of the Common Room and the interest that the teachers had in us, as pupils, was extraordinary.

Q: What sports or other pursuits did you take part in at School?

A: Cricket was my first love and I played in the First XI for three years. I played a little bit of hockey - I was a Second XI hockey player - and I was a mediocre rugby player. This was at a time when the school had those three main sports. There was no opportunity to play football which I probably would have enjoyed. But if I wasn’t in the classroom, I was on the sports field.

Q: What are your favourite memories that stand out to you, from your time at Tonbridge?

A: I enjoyed success on the sports field – that was obviously terrific.

I co-produced Androcles and the Lion, and cast myself - with remarkable hubris - as the ‘handsome captain’! It was all very well until I forgot my lines during one of the performances and realised my mistake of appointing a prompter with a stammer. I never went back on the stage after that! But learning to speak in public was incredibly useful. In effect in business I found myself ‘on stage’ daily giving two or three speeches a day.

Q: Looking back, were your A-level subject choices the best ones for your career in finance?

A: When I chose my A levels I had no idea what I wanted to do with my career, so I picked A levels that I would enjoy, and the same applied to my choice of university degree. My A levels were in English, French & History and my degree was in English and French. I hardly ever used my French in my business career – I have forgotten most of my French, despite having a degree, although I am reasonably competent in restaurants in France and I enjoyed my year in France. Towards the end of my career with RSA we had a business in Canada, so my French came in useful then, but I have to admit that I tended to open with a pre-written paragraph in French and would quickly transfer into English!

However, I found English was actually very relevant and useful. It has helped me express myself at various levels and make sure presentations hung together and were sound. So the English element was surprisingly valuable.

Q: Looking back at your career, what have been your career highlights?

A: Being asked to run a FTSE 100 financial services company was a tremendous experience. I was fortunate in that people took chances on me when I was young. I moved to America when I was 32 and I was asked to run a US mortgage business with about 500 employees (the previous largest number of people I’d ever led was 4!). It was only the second time I had been to the States so I didn’t know the country well and I was running a mortgage business I

knew little about, so people took a big gamble with me, but it was the best learning experience that I could ever have had because I was thrown in at the deep end in a business that wasn’t performing that well. What I learnt was that it was relatively easy to spot what needed to be done but it was much harder to actually do it, but I had a lot of support from the organisation and I had a great sense of achievement in the progress we made there.

From the age of 32 to 52 I ran all sorts of different businesses of different sizes and I found it all tremendously rewarding. Being able to lead a team, create alignment and help people develop - I found all that incredibly stimulating.

Q: Of the impact modelling done when Covid was discovered - at least for this country - do you feel the actual economic impact of the pandemic reflects what was predicted at the beginning of the year?

A: It’s difficult to say - and when this is published we will know more of the answers – the question is, how long will the recovery take. The original economic modelling suggested a V-shaped recovery – recession followed by swift bounce back - but that has been upset by the second wave. The second wave wasn’t properly predicted in the economic modelling and so that will delay recovery.

I don’t feel too squeamish about the level of government borrowing at the moment because interest rates are at historic lows so they can borrow at low rates and therefore once recovery comes, less will have to be spent on interest repayments than debt repayments.

Q: Is there anything in particular you can pinpoint that you gained at Tonbridge that you have taken forward into your career, and your life?

A: The ethos of the school teaches you how to behave in life and in business and instils confidence. It’s amazing when I meet OTs in business and elsewhere. Overwhelmingly their characteristics are thoughtfulness, generosity, kindness, sense of humour. I really believe these are attributes that were instilled in me at school and that have certainly stood me, in good stead. I’m an even-tempered, calm, relaxed person – I enjoy life and don’t take myself too seriously – I think these were all characteristics that came out of my time at Tonbridge.

Q: What advice would you give current Tonbridge boys looking to pursue a career in finance?

A: I didn’t take a decision to go into finance until my final year at University. I kind of fell into it because I thought I was reasonably numerate and banks looked like interesting places to work. If you have decided on finance as a career at an earlier age than me, I would consider a twin degree, with a non-vocational aspect such as a language or arts subject, combined with a vocational subject like law, business or economics that provides you with some business grounding.

Q: How did you become chair of the Hospice?

A: I had just left RSA Insurance in early 2014 and the Hospice was looking for a new Chair. They’d appointed Headhunters and I was approached, I

I’m still getting used to the fact that the Hospice is an organisation that people only speak highly of, which is an unusual experience for someone who has spent their career in financial services in the UK!

think because I lived locally. I went to the Hospice and met a number of the Trustees and the Chief Executive and I thought this was an opportunity to give something back to the local community. Even though I’d lived in the Tonbridge area for 45 of my 59 years, I hadn’t done much locally other than play sport, and this was an opportunity to do something very different. Clearly Hospice in the Weald is the largest and one of the most well-regarded local charities, and I thought this looked really interesting and I could help and bring value.

Q: What does your role as Chair of Hospice in the Weald involve on a day-to-day basis?

A: The thing about any Chairman role is that it’s either easy or difficult depending on how good the Chief Executive is. We are blessed at the Hospice with an outstanding Chief Executive and that has made my life as Chairman a whole lot easier. We have formal meetings and awaydays and I have one-on-ones with the Chief Executive. My role is really coach and counsellor to the Chief Executive, leading the board, agreeing strategy and monitoring implementation. Informally I also help in the fundraising efforts to contact as many local people that I know whom I think the Hospice could benefit from having as Sponsors, Investors or Patrons.

Q: Adjusting to the current times with social distancing and safety measures must have required huge amount of planning and money. What have the impacts been on the organisation as a whole: the patients, the day-to-day running and on your staff working in this new environment?

A: Like the NHS, the nursing staff and clinical staff at the Hospice have done an absolutely spectacular job during the pandemic. The Hospice itself has proved to be remarkably resilient over the past 12 months. We have had some Covid patients and some staff diagnosed with Covid, but it has been relatively limited and I am very proud of the work that has been done to protect the hospice through what have been unprecedented times. We hope that before long we will be out of the woods and back to normal.

Q: What challenges face the Hospice, and other similar charities, including Covid challenges but also in a future post-covid world.

A: I look at the Hospice work as a combination of inputs and outputs. The inputs are the fundraising and making sure we are properly financed. Hospice in the Weald has to raise more than 90 per cent of the £8 million it takes to run as an organisation every year, from the local community. We receive less than 10% in a normal year from government so that puts a tremendous onus on us to make sure that, through a combination of activities, we are raising the money we need. We are lucky that we have a great reputation – I joke with people that I’m still getting used to the fact that the Hospice is an organisation that people only speak highly of, which is an unusual experience for someone who has spent their career in financial services in the UK! Making sure that the fundraising is on track and that we are encouraging the support we need is a big part of the challenge at the Hospice.

The output is obviously the care we provide to patients, carers, families and family friends. That is outstanding and it is an absolute privilege to see how it becomes a virtuous circle. We now see 1800 people a year – when I started back in 2014 we were only able to see about 1300 – so that’s a significantly increase in the number of patients. It’s very humbling to see the Hospice’s work with patients and the quality of care – the more people we see and the more outstanding care we can provide - the more people want to give. It really is a virtuous circle.

Q: What fundraising strategies will the Hospice be putting in place, moving forward?

A: Our fundraising comes from a number of different sources. Our charity shops are important to us and we will be expanding the number of shops, particularly furniture shops which are a newer innovation, like the one in Tonbridge High Street, which generate more income and profit than the traditional shops.

We also have a lottery and we will be looking to increase the number and amount given through the lottery. We have In Memoriam gifts from family of people whom we have looked after and who are sadly no longer with us.

We also run very successful events and we are very pleased that we have worked with the school on a number of events in the past and we hope to continue to expand cooperation with the school.

Q: Being an OT and the Chairman of the Hospice has enabled you to build the relationship between both the school and the Hospice. Can you tell me more about the relationship and is the hope that your successor will continue this?

A: I have championed the Hospice getting closer to the school simply because I thought the largest local charity should have strong links with an institution as important as Tonbridge. My successor, Gary Withers, is an OT parent, so I imagine that he and the Chief Executive will remain in close contact with the school. There are mutually beneficial activities for both, in terms of using school facilities or work experience for pupils interested in a career in medicine. It’s eye opening to work at the Hospice. We can give boys the opportunity to see that type of provision of quality care which is incredibly instructive and good for the soul.

Q: Once you’ve handed over the reins from your Chairman role, have you got anything in the pipeline locally in Kent – or nationally - that you can tell us about?

Well, very kindly the Hospice has asked me to be their first President. From a charitable perspective it will be difficult to find a better charity than the Hospice, locally. I will also continue doing some other work in the charitable sector, but I think I may look nationally, rather than locally. Other than that, I hope to continue my portfolio career for a few years yet ●

The Hospice has continued to deliver outstanding care to local families throughout the pandemic, only made possible by the wonderful Hospice nurses. To donate and help fund a nurse, visit

www.hospiceintheweald.org.uk/ fundraise

or contact Lou Wardle, Head of Fundraising on 01892 820533 or

 lou.wardle@hospiceintheweald.

org.uk