WHY I GIVE DAVID SELLEY

WHY I GIVE

BY DAVID SELLEY (52-57)

When I received the ONA MagazineBursary Edition I was moved to consider how fortunate I am to have been at RGS in the 1950s. It was a Direct Grant school and my father paid about £15 a term for my fees.

I felt compelled to express my gratitude by donating sufficient to cover one student for one year.”

Sammy Middlebrook

My father worked for British Railways and was moved to Newcastle in 1952, I transferring from Brigg Grammar School in Lincolnshire. I was accepted at RGS by Headmaster, OW Mitchell (48-60) –a libertarian who generally believed smart boys would behave properly if left alone, particularly in the Sixth Form. I’m not sure it always worked and I am not sure what the Masters thought of it. But it was fun.

Of the teachers, I well remember the Theakstone brothers (Anatole (32-53) and Louis (25-61), who taught me Russian and mental arithmetic), the terrifying “Slinker” Owen (23-60) (Latin), MG Robinson (34-72) (English) and many others. But most of all I remember Sammy Middlebrook (18-58), my History Teacher and mentor whose intervention in my education turned out to be immensely beneficial for the rest of my life. Sammy suggested I should apply to Oxford. My father was not at all keen. He thought I should start earning a living. Nobody in our extended family had ever been to university and my father had left school when he was 14. Sammy persuaded my father to change his mind. I was accepted in 1957 for 1959, after my National Service. Most of my best friends at Christ Church came from similar backgrounds. As the local authority grant wasn’t quite enough to cover everything, a summer job was necessary. My two jobs were in the accounting department at the Royal Station Hotel and the following year as a Porter on Darlington station.

Sammy was an atheist, but was also Assistant Headmaster, so when Mr Mitchell was absent he led morning prayers. It was very obvious that his heart wasn’t in it. Sammy was a very quiet man, physically small and very patient, the sort of teacher who made you want to learn. He got us interested in local history, for which he was eminently qualified, having authored Newcastle upon Tyne –Its Growth and Achievement, published in two editions. I treasure my copy of the 1950 edition to this day. My thesis was a history of the River Tyne and I thoroughly enjoyed the research involved.

I have many fond memories of RGS. I remember my tiny role in Twelfth Night, enough for me to conclude that acting was most definitely not my forte. A useful lesson. But I did enjoy being Archivist in the Sixth Form film School of the North. I also revelled in the school camps in Eskdale, the Isle of Arran and the harvest camp in Lincolnshire run by “Tucker” Anderson (24-60), probably the gentlest soul ever to teach at RGS.

In my National Service in the RAF I had trained as a Chinese linguist and spent my second year in Hong Kong before going to Oxford. This opened my eyes wide to the diversity in our country and the world and inspired my lifelong passion for travel. I had applied to read History at Oxford, but one day in Hong Kong a couple of months before I was due to be demobbed, I received a letter from my prospective History tutor hoping that my Latin had improved since I had taken the entrance exam. You can just imagine how much my Latin had improved! So I switched to PPE for which Latin was not considered necessary. On finishing Oxford, I went to Toronto for three years to become a Chartered Accountant, after which I