WHEN John Hansford (Coleridge B 1931-40, Headmaster 1985-86) addressed Founder's Day Dinner in 1986, he recalled a painful tale from his own schooldays. As a Maths Grecian he was taught Subsidiary English by "a hearty games-playing bachelor" whom he "hated and feared with every fibre of my being… I could learn nothing from him, and if ever I tried to do so, his comments at my inadequacy (doubtless meant to spur me on) reduced me to mental paralysis." So bad did things get that the Headmaster wrote on his report, "Surely he does not really want to be illiterate?"
Help arrived in September 1939 in the shape of a new member of staff, a young man with a strange voice and violent red hair who "set me free to be myself and to learn how not to be illiterate. He set me free because he never criticised anything I produced - he just encouraged me to go ahead and get on with it."
The young man was Michael Warneford-Brown, and there must be many Old Blues still living who remember him with similar pleasure.
That stern critic of the CH of the Thirties and Forties Norman Longmate (Peele A 1936-43) has nothing but praise for "Warny-B", as he was nicknamed. In his take-no-prisoners autobiography The Shaping Season, Longmate hails his arrival, fresh from Oxford, "uncontaminated by the usual pedagogic cynicism" and bursting with enthusiasm, "one of the masters who had a real influence on me."
He's frank about Warneford-Brown's oddity ("Most of my contemporaries made fun of him," John Hansford admitted) with his long, somewhat uncoordinated limbs, permanent smile, pink complexion and thick, flowing, vividly coloured, usually disordered hair. "His appearance was sufficient to create a disturbance at any school function". Small wonder that the late Paddie Drake (Coleridge A, Barnes B, Middleton B 1939-47) found him "one of the most easily-recognised members of staff", in part because his green tweed suit was as brightly coloured as his hair was.
He had a propensity for inadvertently comical remarks, such as "Robert Walpole drank like a fish and was called to the Bar" or his threat to report an erring pupil to "the Usher" (he meant the School Sergeant, whose name was Usher, but it seemed irresistibly funny at the time).
The butt of many schoolboy jokes, Warny-B nonetheless gained his pupils' warm respect. His enthusiasm was infectious and, Longmate says, he was "full of teaching ideas already commonplace in other schools but still viewed with suspicion at Christ's Hospital." In the classroom the boys should try to perform Shakespeare, instead of just reading him; they might even find themselves on the Big School stage rattling through She Stoops To Conquer, with no audience, in what was supposed to be free time. The Upper Fourth should have its own magazine, with non-literary boys chipping in by contributing jokes. Holiday work - an unheard-of thing - was mooted.
Pupils would be stretched by being called upon to speak, without warning, in defence of opinions opposite to their own. Essay topics were often controversial - "Blood Sports", "Capital Punishment", "Co-education", "Compulsory Games", "The school OTC". (In marking, Longmate the future professional writer was treated more strictly than Hansford the struggling mathematician: "watch the length of your sentences and do not let your style become over-rich.")
1940 saw an early example of community service at CH, when Warny-B took several boys to a medical mission in the Kentish hop fields.
In the following year his direction in life became plainer: he was ordained deacon and, while continuing to teach at CH, appointed curate at West Grinstead. Two years later he left the School and enlisted as a chaplain in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He served with the Royal Marines and was seriously wounded, losing the use of his right arm; his Daily Telegraph obituary ascribed this to shrapnel, though Longmate says it was the work of an over-zealous sentry. His connection with the Marines was to reach a horrific climax at the end of the Eighties.
Post-war he returned to Oxford as chaplain of his old college, St Peter's, and curate of the university church, before becoming a valued lecturer at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, a role he retained when appointed as librarian and fellow at St Augustine's College at Canterbury, newly established as a staff college for leaders of the worldwide Anglican church.
The Fifties he spent at Church House as assistant secretary of the Council for Training for the Ministry, helping to select thousands of ordination candidates, many of them ex-servicemen. A courteous and compassionate pastor, he served as chaplain to the entire Church House staff. He also became examining chaplain to the Bishop of Southwell and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
For seventeen years (1960-77) he was Archdeacon of Nottingham and emphatically a man of God rather than an ecclesiastical bureaucrat. After he died The Times remembered his "delight in puncturing windy political diatribes at assemblies or conveniently forgetting unnecessary paper-pushing." His contribution to restoring morale after a scandal forced his diocesan bishop to resign was widely praised. He did his share of work at national level too - ten years as a Church Commissioner, fifteen-plus on the C of E Pensions Board, another ten on the Redundant Churches Use Committee.
The Venerable Michael Brown, as he had become, retired to Kent, where his expertise in church furnishings and antiquarian matters was put to good use by Canterbury diocese. Living at Walmer he renewed his link with the Marines at Deal and was made an honorary member of the officers' mess and chaplain to the School of Music. On 1 September 1989 an IRA bomb exploded there, killing eleven bandsmen and injuring twenty-two more. He was immediately on the spot, offering whatever comfort and support he could. It was, he said later, "the worst day of my life."
He retired from his chaplaincy in 1996 and died in 2004 aged 88.
Perhaps it's appropriate to end on a note of innocent enthusiasm. By his marriage in 1978 to the widowed Marie Chaloner (née Dawson) he had gained three stepsons, one of whom wrote after his death that he had had many fond memories of his time at CH. "In old age, he particularly enjoyed rice pudding and on several occasions he said how much he liked the excellent rice puddings at the school produced in enormous vats! If only all school dinners were as enjoyable!"
This article originally appeared in The Old Blue for August 2006.
