Robert Birley, mainly in South Africa by C J (Jonty) Driver, 44pp; available from Author (see below)

It is always a pleasure to review anything written by Jonty Driver.  His latest literary offering is a personal memoir of Robert Birley, a distinguished educationalist and ex-Headmaster of Eton who died 40 years ago this year and whose achievements will be sadly unknown to a younger generation.

Jonty writes movingly of how Robert Birley first befriended him and helped him to escape from inevitable victimisation in apartheid South Africa. One of Jonty’s charms as a writer is his readiness to share his vulnerabilities with his readers and at this moment in his life he was a deeply troubled young man.  Robert Birley became an important catalyst in his rescue.  The memoir continues as a fascinating narrative of their developing friendship.  A vivid portrait of a great and a good man emerges from these pages,  a man who deserves to be remembered.

Robert Birley’s achievements were massive. Jonty focuses strongly on  one of his lesser talents. He was a brilliant facilitator, acting as a go-between linking the right people at the right moment to solve or retrieve a situation. At the end of the memoir, Jonty defends the "old boy network" which Robert Birley used so skilfully to help so many people, “of course it shouldn’t be necessary but there is nothing virtuous in everyone getting the same equally bad treatment so if I have an opportunity to make things easier for an individual I do so without compunction", wise and humane words which could apply to Jonty himself. I can say that with conviction because our Winchelsea Literary Society has benefitted so richly from Jonty’s own old boy network.

Perhaps Robert Birley’s greatest claim to fame is his role in re-building the German educational system after 1945, a task which earned him the honorary title, "Headmaster of Germany”. It is tempting to speculate on how different the world might be if he had been given the comparable commission of de-toxifying Soviet education after the death of Stalin in 1953. The young Vladimir Putin might have turned out very differently 

Howard Norton

To obtain a copy, contact Jonty by e-mailing him* with your physical address; in return he can ask you either for a cheque or for a payment of £7-00 into his account by BACS.

*jontydriver@hotmail.com