Are today’s English teachers still as novel?

PAV’S PATCH:

I WATCHED an excellent programme on BBC Four the other week. It was all about the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s book “To Kill a Mockingbird” which I first read way back in 1972.

I had to study the book for my English literature O-level and quickly fell in love with it. It’s an excellent novel but I also had an excellent teacher, Mr Ingram.

He was a small man with a mop of frizzy hair — looked a bit like Charlie Drake — and used to explode into the most unusual noise when he laughed. For some reason he was nicknamed Icarus.

For A-level I did “Richard II”, war poems and Thomas Hardy’s “Return of the Native” which features a wonderful character called Diggory Venn. He’s a reddleman, selling a dye for marking sheep which has turned him bright red. That started a great love affair between me and Hardy until four years ago when I read “A Pair of Blue Eyes”. What a morbid book. The only time I’ve been as gloomy as when I finished that novel was after Alan Sunderland’s goal in the 1979 FA Cup final.

Do they still have inspiring English teachers? In the sixth-form, we worshipped Mr Sandford, and even declared him honorary Tarzan of our jungle society. Whenever he walked into the classroom we would all make whooping animal noises until he instructed us to stop. I was a gibbon. Phil Jones was an elephant.

Unfortunately our other English teacher, a woman, was by no means as popular but that’s probably because of the stuff she had to teach us. There was no such thing as being in touch with your feminine side in those days, at least not in Hyde, but she took us for “Anthony and Cleopatra”, Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park”, and William Golding’s “The Spire”.

“The Spire” is about an obsessed priest in charge of building a cathedral. We all read it and gave a collective shrug of the shoulders. The teacher then explained that the cathedral was like a man on his back, so you can imagine what the spire was. What a weird book but she used to get into a real froth when she discussed its symbolism.

One chapter talks a lot about gargoyles and she suddenly stopped and told me my undertones weren’t as subtle as I thought. She seemed to think I saw her as a gargoyle. As if.

As for “Mansfield Park”. Imagine extolling the virtues of Jane Austen to a bunch of 17-year-old lads in 1974. And then we have the heroine: Fanny Price.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions...