BELATED congratulations to National Trust nature conservation adviser Matthew Oates (Th B 63-72) on receiving the Marsh Lepidoptera Award for Lifetime Achievement from the charity Butterfly Conservation in November 2007.
There's more about his life and work in this 2006 interview:
At the age of ten I got sent to school in butterfly-rich West Sussex. There was an elderly housemaster - a gentle giant - who had been teaching maths without humour for several centuries to the uninterested. But, on Tuesday afternoons in the summer, he ran a butterfly and moth collecting group. He never knew my name but nonetheless he fired me up - he was the catalyst, and I owe him everything.Can anyone put a name to him?
2 comments:
I think Matthew was in Prep and Leigh Hunt B prior to Thornton B so my best guess would be Mr MH Jones. He taught various subjects including maths if I remember correctly.
Thanks for that suggestion. You may be right, although to those of us who know of MH Jones only from his posthumous reputation (e.g. Dickie Dawe's description: "a very big man, frightening both to boys and inexperienced house tutors alike") it feels odd to hear him called a gentle giant.
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